Observing Holy Thursday—The Epicenter of the Divine Narrative

On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (05/02/24), Hank resumes his overview of Holy Week with Holy Thursday, the epicenter of the divine narrative. A narrative that begins with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had rejected the serpent, they would have eaten from the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge would not have been withheld from them. Instead, they were exiled from the Edenic garden and from traversing the slope leading upward toward the peak of deification. Thankfully, the narrative does not end there. For in the panoply of history a Second Adam clothed himself in fallen humanity. It was above all in his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead that Christ returned humanity to the life of Eden. This then is the great arc of the biblical narrative. From the tree of life in the Edenic garden to the tree of life in the eternal garden. An arch that finds its apex with the Eucharistic bounty spilling forth from the trodden grapes of Golgotha’s hill. The Last Supper that we commemorate on Holy Thursday constitutes the central mystery of the Church. It is the source and zenith of Church life. By it, we are changed from human multiplicity to one body in Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Within the Eucharistic assembly, divine life flows into us and penetrates the fabric of our humanity. The future life is infused into the present one and is blended with it, so that our fallen humanity may be transformed into the glorified humanity of the new Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.