Holy Thursday

In past years we began the tradition of washing each other's feet on Holy Thursday.  The first year we did this, Elise was a newborn and we were only a family of four.  I washed the hubby's feet, he washed mine and Kayla and Elise washed each other's (with help).  This year we've got a family of 5 so I suppose we'll all just wash the feet of the next one down in the line.  We read the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet before our little foot washing ceremony.

Growing up my family never had any extra special Holy Thursday festivities.  But in my research, I'm finding that lots of people actually do a bit more to celebrate the day.  So I decided to add a few more traditions for us to embrace in the coming years.

This morning the girls and I made unleavened bread for our meal this evening.  I found a very simple recipe here Maria Trapp's unleavened bread .

I read that it used to be a fairly common practice to visit several churches on Holy Thursday night to commemorate the Lord asking the disciples to "stay awake and pray with me".  I'm not sure this one will actually happen this year...but if we don't start it this year, we'll start it another year because I like the sound of this tradition a lot.

We'll also have some additions to our meal that have some symbolism.

As mentioned previously, unleavened bread (reminder of the Eucharist)

grapes (reminder of the wine that becomes the Blood of Christ)

applesauce (reminder of the bricks and mortar the Jews slaved over in Egypt because of it's mortor-like consistency)

something green, veggies most likely (in some cultures Holy Thursday is referred to as Green Thursday because the priest used to wear green vestments for Mass on this day)

And of course we did a fun art project (find detailed directions at Catholicicing.com)

Ta-da!

Holy Thursday is when the Last Supper took place--the Institution of the Holy Eucharist!!  So the last thing we did was to sing a bunch of songs about the Eucharist.  My very favorite happens to be the classic, "I am the Bread of Life"

Happy Maundy Thursday!