Maundy Thursday begins the Sacred Paschal Triduum (‘three days’), and in a sense all the liturgies from now until the Easter Vigil are one single act of worship as we walk with Christ through his Passion (broken only by our need to eat and sleep).

An important part of the liturgy has the priest washing the feet of members of the congregation, calling to mind the command that Jesus gave his disciples at the Last Supper; that command, the Latin ‘mandatum,’ gives us the name Maundy Thursday. The choir will sing the traditional antiphon for the foot-washing, ‘Ubi caritas,’ in two beautiful settings by Maurice Duruflé and Ola Gjeilo.

Another main feature of Maundy Thursday is the stripping away of all decoration in the sanctuary at the end of the service. We can see this as analogous with the stripping of Christ’s garments on the way to the cross. But it’s best seen as an expression of casting away all distractions, all the comforts which we have become used to, and walking with Christ, stripped of everything, so that we might focus only on him.

Finally, we go in procession to the Lady Chapel, beautifully decorated like a garden, singing a hymn; just as the disciples went with Jesus to Gethsemane. We will keep watch with Christ until midnight (you are welcome to come and go as you wish through that time).

On Maundy Thursday we set aside the red vestments of the Passion and wear white. We even sing ‘Gloria’ again, after so long without it. This might seem strange; but it is of course deliberate. This meal is an occasion for joy, Christ’s gift of his very presence with us in the Eucharist for ever, even as he goes to his death.

But, like Palm Sunday, we enter into the tension between joy and pain; light and darkness. What begins in white with joyful singing, ends in darkness, stripped of colour and indeed any sound at all. It brings us into the atmosphere of that last and first meal together; how the disciples must have felt as Judas left, and Peter’s betrayal was foretold, along with Jesus’ own death. Our liturgy on Maundy Thursday explores this tension fully.