Dear brothers and sisters, this evening we call to mind the surpassing mystery and precious gift of the Holy Eucharist.  With the celebration of Mass this evening the Church begins our Easter Triduum and so recalls the Last Supper in which Our Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed and showing His love for those who were His own in the world, gave His Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine.  Offering them to his Father and giving them to the Apostles to partake of them, He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood to: Do this in memory of Me, perpetuating the Offering until He comes again.
 
Liturgical instructions for this evening encourage us to pay careful attention to the Mysteries we commemorate, namely: the institution of the Eucharist, the institution of the Priesthood, and Christ's command of brotherly love.   The homily is to explain these points.
 
You will have noticed how, at the heart of our church, the Tabernacle is empty and will remain so until the end of the Easter Vigil when the Blessed Sacrament will return to that special home where He dwells daily among us, His Beloved People, as our Sacrament of Peace, Rest and Light.  accompanying us through the ups and downs of our lives on this earth till we reach our blessed home with Him in Heaven. 
 
There is no final blessing to end our evening’s rites but, instead, we form a procession with our Cross-bearer at our head and carry the Lord with lighted candles and incense singing our "Pange lingua".  We have already prepared a place for the repose of the Lord’s Body where we can remain watching with Him in contemplation and adoration, just as the Apostles,   who followed Him into His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.  There the Lord Jesus, willing His Father’s will over His own, and showing how He had come not to be served but to serve, began to be crushed like the olive tree so as to provide a rich harvest of oil for us, the poor ones, and for our healing, our strength, our joy and salvation.  The Church encourages us to spend time into the night in adoration of the Lord, reading some part of the Passion of Saint John. 
 
As we do so the altar is being stripped and joins our covered Crucifixes and images.  Lamps are extinguished at the statues of our saints.  Church bells are silent.  These are indeed sober hours for our Church.  From midnight the day of the Lord's passion has begun. 
In recent years we have come better to appreciate the Holy Mass as that Banquet longed for in the Old Covenant and now exceedingly fulfilled.  We see accomplished in this Sacred Meal what the Prophet Isaiah foresaw when he looked into the far distance and caught sight of a Mountain where the Lord of hosts would make for all peoples a feast of rich food and fine wines.  He could hear it being said of that day and of that Banquet, ’See, this is our God in Whom we hoped.  L et us be glad and rejoice in His salvation’.  On the Mountain of Calvary, when the centurion pierced the Lord’s side as He slept in death and there flowed out the finest refreshment and choicest juices, how Isaiah’s dream was wonderfully fulfilled!
 
Neither have we forgotten how the Holy Mass is a Sacrifice.  Our Old Testament reading calls to mind the image of the Lamb slaughtered in the presence of the whole assembly at the time of Israel’s evening oblation.  It was a Passover of the LORD, for on that same night the Lord went through Egypt and struck down every firstborn of the land, exercising His sovereignty and just judgment over human history.  Seeing the Lamb’s blood above the homes of His People, the Angel of the Lord passed over and spared these alone.  That day was to be commemorated as a memorial for them in perpetual institution where they remembered that Lamb, upon Whom lay a punishment that brought them peace and through Whose Sacrifice they were healed.  In the Holy Mass we commemorate the Sacrifice of the Lamb of Calvary, Whose Blood is our great sparing and Whose flesh consumed is our nourishment into Eternal Life. 
But, if we can say we appreciate our Eucharist as a Banquet and Sacrifice, can we honestly say these days we have sufficient sensibility to the Lord’s Real Presence abiding among us in our Tabernacles?  Perhaps this evening might be the occasion of some Eucharistic examen of conscience as to how much reverence and awe for the Real Presence of the Lord remains among us.  It is not that we do not believe He is here so much that we no longer seem to behave as though He were, with so much of what can only be described as indifference, irreverence and idle chatter in His  Presence.  Could it really be that we have lost our love for His special Presence in the Eucharist!  And yet, brothers and sisters, What we approach is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or gloom or total darkness, or a storm; or trumpet-blast or the sound of a voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them.  But what we come to in our Tabernacles is the dwelling of the living God, God himself, the supreme Judge, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, Whose purifying blood pleads more insistently than Abel's.
It is the Lord! Who stands on holy ground, Whose Presence commands we stop to bow in silent reverence and Whom we should approach, like Moses, with discalced feet.  Yet, for all its Mystery, it is above all Jesus our Sacrament of Peace, in Whose presence all our restless yearnings cease and sorrows depart.  It is the Presence in Whose ear all trustfully we tell our tail of misery.  Dear brothers and sisters let us find again, in our treasury of faith, that voice of our fathers that gladly raised songs of love and heartfelt praise to our Sweet Sacrament Divine and prove our own  generation good stewards of this Beloved Presence.
 
We turn to Our Blessed Mother Mary, whose faithful obedience to the Lord’s call through the Angel Gabriel gave to the world the Body of the Lord, who adored His Body till It breathed its last and who now shares, in Her own  assumed flesh, the fullest delight of perfect communion with Him in Heaven.
Ave verum corpus natum de Maria, Virgine. V ere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine .