Pope's Intentions
Universal: Creation:
That people may learn to respect creation and care for it as a gift of God.
Evangelization: Persecuted Christians:
That persecuted Christians may feel the consoling presence of the Risen Lord and the solidarity of all the Church.
Holy Thursday - Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper
Commentary of the day
Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Dominican tertiary, Doctor of the Church, co-patron of Europe
Dialogue, 134 (©Classics of Western spirituality, 1980)
« Then he took the cup... , saying : ‘This is my blood ... which will be shed on behalf of many for the remission of sins » (Mt 26,27-28)
O Immeasurable Love! By revealing your secrets to me you have given me a bitter-sweet medicine so that I might rise up once and for all from the sickness of foolish indifference and run to you with concern and eager longing. You would have me know myself and your goodness, and the sins committed against you by every class of people and especially by your ministers, so that I might draw tears from the knowledge of your infinite goodness and let them flow as a river over my wretched self and over these wretched living dead.... Now, I beg you, be merciful to the world and to holy Church.
Alas for my wretched sorrowful soul, the cause of all evil! Do not delay any longer in granting your mercy to the world; bow down and fulfill the longing of your servants... They desire the blood in which you washed away iniquity and drained the sore of Adam’s sin. His blood is ours because you have made of it a bath for us, and you neither can nor will refuse it to those who ask for it in truth. Give, then, the fruit of this blood to these creatures of yours… They are asking you through this blood to be merciful to the world.