Music from Maundy Thursday

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Click on the links below to listen to audio selections from Maundy Thursday:

Gradual Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25    
Anthems sung by the Schola
Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
Ubi Caritas
Go to dark Gethsemane

To view photos from Maundy Thursday 2012 at the Monastery click here.

Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the holiest three days in an already holy week.  The liturgies of the so-called Triduum (from the Latin meaning ‘three days’) are in actuality one liturgy beginning with the Maundy Thursday eucharist and foot washing, continuing on Good Friday with the veneration of the cross and communion from bread and wine consecrated on Thursday, and culminating with the renewal of our baptismal vows and the first eucharist of the resurrection at the Great Vigil of Easter.  Once we commence with worship on Maundy Thursday, we are not formally dismissed until Easter Day.  The liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorates the humility of the Lord in his willingness to do the most lowly of tasks.  The word ‘maundy’ is an English corruption of the Latin mandatum, from the ‘new commandment’ that Jesus gives his disciples after washing their feet.  In our re-enactment and remembrance of that event, the Superior washes the feet of members of the community, who in turn wash the feet of other community members, who in turn wash the feet of the gathered congregation, who in turn wash the feet of one another.  At the conclusion of our eucharistic feast, we are invited, as were the first disciples, to watch and pray with the Lord on the night before his crucifixion and death.  Consecrated bread and wine will be removed to the Lady Chapel, and the brothers will keep watch through the night.  Any and all are welcome to join us, for as long or as little time as is possible.  It is a solemn, sober, and somber night – for we know what the first disciples did not:  that Jesus will soon be arrested, tried unjustly, and put to death.  Accordingly the church is quietly stripped of all adornment, and the organ and all the bells of the monastery are silenced until the Great Vigil of Easter.