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Many Catholics are unaware that Holy Thursday commemorates the institution of Christ’s ministerial priesthood. Perhaps this is due to the absence of Christ explicitly ordaining the apostles in the Last Supper narratives. Are there clues that suggest such an ordination? Karlo Broussard gives the answer.
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Transcript:
Most Catholics are aware that Holy Thursday commemorates Jesus’ Last Supper as the First Mass. But what some miss is that Holy Thursday also celebrates Jesus’ institution of the ministerial priesthood.
When you read the Last Supper narratives in the Synoptic Gospels you don’t find Jesus ordaining the apostles. You’re left wondering, “Where does the Catholic Church get off thinking that Jesus made the apostles priests at the Last Supper?”
There are three clues that support this claim.
First, Jesus commands the apostles to “do this remembrance of me.” The Greek verb for “do,” poieo, can be translated literally as “offer” in the sense of offering a sacrifice, as it is in in Leviticus 9:7 of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament).
Now, offering sacrifice is a priestly function. Therefore, Jesus’ command to offer the Last Supper as a sacrifice suggests that Jesus made his apostles ministerial priests.
A second clue is the washing of the apostles’ feet in John 13:5. This calls to mind the ritual washings of Aaron and his sons, which included the washing of their feet, at their priestly ordination in Exodus 40.
Finally, Jesus says in John 13:8 that the apostles could not take “part” in him unless they were washed. The Greek word for “part,” meros, echoes Numbers <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdGd59Yj8r4&amp;t=1100s">18:20</a> and Deuteronomy 10:9, which refer to the “portion” (Greek—meris) that Aaron and the Levites have in God as priests.
So, did Jesus make the apostles priests at the Last Supper? I think these exegetical points give us sufficient reason to answer yes.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Did Jesus Make The Apostles Priests?

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There is a joke that Jesuits don’t worry about meeting Christ in the afterlife as much as they worry about meeting St. Ignatius.
There are reasons why Jesuits are called “Jesuitical,” referring to the perception that they employ fast-and-loose justifications around hard facts of faith that Ignatius of Loyola lived and died for. It’s tragic that the Jesuits now evoke a slinking, sidewinding spirituality that integrates too closely with the wayward world, compromising Catholic teaching to justify a “new” Catholic position.
The great missionary and founder of the Society of Jesus departed this earth on July 31, 1556. The current state of his order would likely incite his soldierly wrath. Such heroic Jesuits as Francis Xavier, Claver, Borgia, Brébeuf, Hopkins, and Schall once dominated our view of the Society of Jesus; now, on the contrary, it seems people can summon to mind one or two remaining “good Jesuits” amid a whole lot of “less good” ones. The Jesuits as an order have entrenched a reputation in recent times as the radical progressives of the Catholic Church. And the tendencies that have taken root in the Jesuits are the same as in progressive politics, so it is little wonder that Jesuits not infrequently take up <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/confusion-in-the-kingdom/">leftist causes</a> in a dangerous blend of Church and state.
The Jesuits leaned into action and breaking new ground. Ignatius himself, for example, vied to <a href="https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009/10/compendium-of-reforms-of-roman-breviary_06.html">unshackle his men</a> from the well-respected custom of singing the Divine Office in choir—this not to disdain tradition, but rather out of single-minded zeal to open up opportunities for apostolic missionary work. Regardless of their saintly founder’s motivation, this trailblazing inclination brought the Jesuits more into the political sphere, and over time, more into the liberal sphere. The Jesuits have been drinking political water for some time—and now there’s something in the water.
Let us take a brief look at the life of Ignatius, this hero of the Faith, to see the origin of the Society of Jesus. Born in the Castle of Loyola in Guipuscoa, Spain, 1491, Ignatius was reared from his boyhood in the arts of chivalry, and after his unruly and amorous service at the court of Ferdinand V of Aragon, he was stationed at the barracks of Pamplona in 1517. Ignatius heroically led his comrades in the defense of the city against France’s siege, falling only after a cannonball shattered his right leg.
Ignatius’s convalescence was prolonged and painful. The boisterous knight lay restless, and though his reading had to that point been devoted to the escapades of Amadis of Gaul and El Cid, all he had on hand at this time were the life of Jesus Christ and the lives of the saints. Ignatius found in them chivalric battles and enraptured ends that put all his beloved legends in the context of a larger drama of which he had never dreamed. The Crusades were enkindled in the wounded knight of Loyola as he vowed to rival the saints in sanctity. He swore to take Jerusalem from the hands of the heathen, laid his naked sword across his knees, and waited.
As soon as he could walk, Ignatius went to the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, placed his armor before an image of Mary, and then went to a cave in the solitude of Manresa, where he spent ten months in self-mortification. Ignatius prepared his heart for a new type of battle, training in the arms of the spirit, strengthening his resolve to serve heaven through prayer and fasting. There in that cave, Ignatius learned asceticism and discovered the foundation of his Spiritual Exercises. He emerged lean and battered but happy—ready to storm the Holy Land.
Six followers gathered around this strange and striking ascetic. Ignatius led them like a military officer in serving the poor, in study, and in community prayer. Together, they vowed lifelong labor as missionaries. The Society of Jesus was born. These first Jesuits crossed the Alps toward Jerusalem, but they found Venice ravaged by war with the Turks and their passage blocked. In Venice they were ordained to the priesthood, and turning their footsteps toward Rome, they placed themselves under Pope Paul III, who approved the order in 1540 and named Ignatius the first superior general.
Jesuit spirituality was marked by unwavering faith, indomitability, and intellectual acumen. The Jesuits clashed with Protestants, rescued beleaguered Catholics from England, and defended the borders of France from heresy. No challenge was too daunting, difficult, or dangerous. They marched to India, China, and Japan. They sailed to the New World. They conquered countless souls for Christ.
The Jesuits have always sought to be the tip of the spear. Such motivation can lead to new ideas that are not as sound as old ideas. The healthy urge for discovery goes astray when liberal humanitarianism creeps in, with openness, however mentally justified, to shifting traditional paradigms. The cutting-edge quality of the Jesuits is a reason why they are often accused of being more political than theological. The progressive character of the Jesuits has brought the order to slippery theological places while giving it a place of regard within the eye of progressive politics, who are comfortable on slippery slopes. The unnatural positions adopted by both the left and many Jesuits regarding human sexuality and society are clear indications of a bad direction.
All this is not to denounce the holy order of St. Ignatius or wallow in thoughts of its decline. The Jesuits’ missionary zeal changed the world in tremendous ways. But now the world is having its revenge. It is terrible how effectively the secular can seize and twist the spiritual. But the world will not have the last word.
Ignatius was a knight who charged the giants of his day with the unconquerable valor of Don Quixote, proving himself, through buffets and bruises, a mighty champion who led an army on for the greater glory of God. It is never too late, and the Jesuits, by the persistence of their patron, can yet be brought back from the brink and earn a better judgment.

St. Ignatius and the Jesuits

<div>What is non-theism?</div><div>Non-theism includes a range of beliefs that reject traditional belief in God. This includes denials of God&#8217;s existence, such as atheism, or skeptical attitudes toward God&#8217;s existence, such as agnosticism. It also includes religious beliefs that do not include worship of God, such as pantheism and some forms of Buddhism.
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Does the Good Thief Disprove Purgatory?

Yesterday’s reading at Mass contained that most marvelously pithy saying of John the Baptist from John’s gospel: “I must decrease. He must increase.”
Today we see this play out in Luke’s account of the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan. This is, let’s remember, pretty incredible. People wanted John to be the Christ. If he had said he was the Christ, they would have had no trouble believing him. And John takes that potential power and influence and casually sets it aside.
His humility paves the way for the even greater humility of the true Christ, who himself enters the waters for John to baptize. Our Gospel selection for today doesn’t include some of the dialogue reported elsewhere between John and Jesus, but in a way, it’s predictable. John is confused. He has been talking all this time about the one who is greater than he, whose sandals he is not worthy to untie, who will baptize the world with fire, and this great anointed one approaches him and asks to be baptized like everybody else. Really, Lord, why? I mean, shouldn’t you be baptizing me?
This is part of a large pattern in the Gospels. Perhaps one reason this story appears to us in the immediate context of the Christmas season is that we are conscious of the Son of God’s human vulnerability and humility. This is all headed to the cross, but before that we find Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and declaring that he calls them not slaves, but friends.
At the baptism, Jesus is publicly identified as the Son of the Father, and this identity is witnessed by the Spirit in the form of a dove. Various heretics in the early centuries, grouped together under the loose label adoptionism, saw this as a moment when the human person Jesus was somehow elevated to divinity. Church councils repeatedly rejected this theory in the first several centuries, even as the formal articulation of Trinitarian and Christological doctrine developed. But the problem I have with this view of the baptism is that it seems to miss the way it fits in with the whole gospel trajectory. If the baptism necessitates some kind of progression or elevation of Christ, so does virtually every other incident of his life. If it is merely human to submit to baptism, what would it take to submit to crucifixion?
In fact, the Fathers’ reading of this story show how it is precisely Christ’s divinity, in his baptism, that makes the difference. Christ was not baptized so that he might be sanctified in the water and become somehow more divine. He was baptized so that he might sanctify the water.
What does it mean to sanctify or consecrate something? It means to set it apart, to mark it somehow. That is the most fundamental meaning of holiness—including, as a transcendent example, the holiness of God. God is utterly unique; he has no equal, no real comparison. When we are baptized, we are consecrated; we are set apart by what the Letter to Titus calls the “laver of regeneration” and the “renovation of the Holy Ghost.” And water has specifically been set apart for this purpose.
But think about this: when we are baptized, is this consecration something ultimately contrary to our nature? True, it is an elevation of our nature, yet it is an elevation that was always intended—our nature was, from the beginning, oriented toward supernatural fellowship with God. And so it is not so much that baptism changes us—though from the perspective of sin, it certainly does that—but that it restores and reanimates what we truly are.
We can apply that to other kinds of consecrations. When we bless water for baptism, we aren’t adding something to water; we are in a way reminding water of its true purpose, which is the life of God. When Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan, he wasn’t somehow invading nature with a foreign substance. He was meeting his own creation face to face and saying, “Remember me?”
There is a liturgical and sacramental shape to creation. When we celebrate the Mass, part of the miracle is not so much to realize that bread and wine can become body and blood, but to realize that so much of the time, they do not do so even though they could. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and showing the true purpose of all time and space—which is to say that it is the time and the place for fellowship with God. This is why we have—in the normal sense—sacred times and sacred places: to heighten our senses and our intellectual contemplation of the fact that God has entered all times and all places to the end of bringing all things into the light of his glory.
Today, as we remember the Lord’s baptism, remember also the hope that it contains—the hope that all things can and will be restored to God’s goodness. In our own baptisms, we were restored to who we are, but it is only in holding fast to our communion with Christ that we can remain who we are. We can say, with John the Baptist, I must decrease; he must increase.
Another way of putting it is this: if I am only myself alone, I am not even that. I can find who I am only in the voice of the one who calls me beloved, who knew me even before I knew myself, and who will call me again to himself in the last day. Amen.