Maundy Thursday At Home
*A Maundy Thursday Litany for a Meal at Home*
*Thursday, April 1, 2021*
*This is a litany for one or more people prepared for the people of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church. Please use this litany alone or with others, and please feel free to share it with anyone who might want to use it for their Maundy Thursday meal devotion.*
*The lines in regular text can be read by one person and the lines in bold read by another person or persons.*
*This litany can also be used in its entirety by one person.*
*There are two movements to this litany: a short reading for washing hands, and a prayer before the meal.*
*The Maundy Thursday Meal is a meal of remembrance and love, a time of giving thanks and renewing our hearts for the acts of serving and being served in the name of Christ Jesus.*
Part I: Washing
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Part II: Blessing before the Meal.
*Just as Jesus’ disciples gathered in a room for a meal with him, this meal is also a meal of gathering: gathering*
*our hearts. This meal is a meal of remembering, a meal of thanksgiving, a meal of love in honor of the one who loves us all, the one who loved us first.*
*Let us Pray…*
*God, we receive the love of Christ.We receive his great example,We receive the power and work he demonstrated by your spirit;And we receive the commands he has given.This is Christ’s command:That we love one another (John 13:34)Just as Christ loved his disciples and others he met.As Christ has done so must we do.This is Christ’s example:Washing the feet of his friends; (John 13:14-15)Humbly doing the work of a servantBecoming vulnerable, laying down his life.*
*This is Christ’s legacyWhich we receive as the gift of heaven:Where once there was sacrifice,Now there is mercy. (Hosea 6:6)Where once there was flesh and blood,Now there are bread and wine. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)*
*The mercy of God has been made known in the body of Christ.The character of God has been made known in the work of Christ.He has shown us a way forward,And we will follow the path of peace.*
*We ask your blessing, Lord, on this simple meal prepared for this night.*
*We ask blessing on the hands that prepared it and the earth from which it came.*
*We ask that we be blessed in eating this meal, that we be strengthened for acts of service, for acts of love in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.*
*Blessings to you this night, the night we pause, each in our own homes, to remember God’s love and to remember that simple meal shared in an upper room so long ago.*
That meal and the love that inspired it connects us all this night.
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