Holy Thursday (2025) - Fr Mannes Tellis, OP

THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

There is, in some sectors of Catholic devotional life, a position which is rather odd. This position is so odd that it is akin to walking into a cinema and watching a movie half way through. This position holds that there is no reason to read the Old Testament, or perhaps, to see the Old Testament as an irrelevance, ancient books for a more primitive kind of people. The objections to reading the Old Testament range from the fact that it is too violent, or that it has a lot of irrelevant narratives, or that it is bound to a specific context which no longer applies to twenty-first century people. Perhaps, even the depiction of God does not gel with modern sensibilities. There is some logic to this position. Granted, God does and commands some strange, even violent things in Old Testament literature. So too, there are some rather convoluted and complex rituals and sacrifices as found in say the book of Leviticus. But on the whole, really if you give it a go, the Old Testament is filled with narratives and storylines any person watching day time television would easily hook on to.

Tonight is one of those nights where the reading of the Old Testament narrative of the Exodus and its attendant ceremony of the Passover cannot be avoided. The narrative of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is seminal to our whole Holy Week celebration. If we did not read those parts of the Old Testament what Jesus does at his last meal with his friends makes no sense, it’s like walking into that movie halfway through; what’s the plot here?

Fundamental to the Passover, the exodus of the Israelites from slavery, and their forty-year sojourn in the desert is the idea of the covenant. During Lent we read about the covenant God made with Abraham, which entailed cutting up animals and the spirit of God passing through them. This was the Abrahamic covenant, the sacred agreement that God would be close to his people and would help them throughout their history, that he would not abandon them.

In the Passover we see a renewal of that covenant insofar as God, through this special and sacred meal, once more, would come to save his people from the slavery of Egypt. The blood of the lamb is sprinkled on the doors and the sacred animal is consumed. All of these symbolic acts again bespeak the sacred covenant Israel had with God, the same covenant God made with Abraham.

Even in the desert when God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, which outlined how they were to observe this covenant, two things were done. First, Moses read the legislation to them, and second, he offered sacrifice pouring blood on an altar he had built, he then sprinkled the people with blood exclaiming, “Here is the blood of the covenant which the Lord makes with you”. This historic rite was followed by a sumptuous meal at God’s place atop Mt Sinai, which Moses attended with his brother Aaron and the seventy elders of Israel—a covenantal meal.

Why was blood used to illustrate the covenant though? Because blood is a metaphor for life. What Moses exclaims is that it is with God’s very life and our lives that fidelity to this agreement is made. It was almost that God would spill his own blood for the sake of this agreement.

Fast forward to tonight and that is what we see. At the Last Supper Jesus reimagines the covenant. Being God he is showing his fidelity to the covenant when he ordains that the bread and wine used are his body and blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant. Hence he has a covenantal meal with the representatives of the new Israel. The same blood, once poured by Moses only in symbol, now at this Last Supper becomes the real blood of God soon to be shed on Calvary. Jesus’ action at the Last Supper points to all the covenants in the past and fulfills them. This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant.

As we meditate tonight on the institution of the Holy Eucharist let us be mindful that we are celebrating that covenant struck so long ago with Abraham, Moses, and Jeremiah, and now made real for us in our sharing of Christ’s body and blood, the blood of God, the God of the covenant.

Fr Mannes Tellis, OP is the Parish Priest of Prospect-North Adelaide, South Australia.