M Thursday – April 18, 2019 – Psalm 116:17
I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the
name of the Lord.
This psalm is linked to the Passover meal. Thus, the Church reads
this psalm on Maundy Thursday, the day during Holy Week when we recall Jesus'
last meal with his disciples in the context of Passover.
For Christians who read Psalm 116 on Maundy Thursday the psalm's
celebration of deliverance from death takes on a unique character. It is not
read as testimony to what God has done in the past so much as it gives hope for
deliverance in the future. The psalm's images of death now apply to the coming
suffering of Jesus. The celebration after deliverance draws us into the
suffering of Jesus as his offering to God and to us. Jesus himself has become a
sacrifice and we now benefit from his faithfulness to God.
The Psalmist calls upon us to trust His word, that the sacrifice
of Christ on the cross it truly genuine and right.
O Lord, I am in need of a Shepherd to seek and save me, for I am a straying sheep. You are the Good Shepherd who seeks and saves the lost. Save me, O Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
O Lord God, who hast left unto us in a wonderful Sacrament a memorial of Thy Passion, grant, we beseech Thee, that we may so use this Sacrament of Thy body and blood that the fruits of Thy redemption may continually be manifest in us.
Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before He suffered, instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen[1]
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