Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers Live, kind of a special episode today, because I shouldn't say kind

of, it is a special episode today, because it's Holy Thursday.

And so for Holy Thursday, we're not going to take calls or anything.

We're just going to talk with Joe Heschmire about Holy Thursday.

Joe Heschmire, apologists here at Catholic Answers, the author of a whole bunch of wonderful

books, including the early church, was the Catholic Church, and that will probably come in handy for our conversation

today about Holy Thursday. Joe, thanks for being with us. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

We are into the thick of it now. This is the very, this is the whole deal these few days, isn't it?

Yeah, true to them. The big question about whether Lent has technically ended or not, it's kind of a three-day unique liturgical season.

That's the holiest part of the church's calendar, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter Sunday.

And this comports with what the early church thought, too. I mean, when you read the Gospels, the detail of Passion Week

is far in excess of the detail of any other part of Christ's ministry. I think this is most

pronounced in the Gospel of John. Yeah. The first 11 chapters of John's Gospel, you see Jesus'

public ministry, you get that whole kind of three-year span.

And then you have just several chapters that just go very slowly, John, like 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,

end to 18 are all just the Last Supper.

And they're all just tonight.

It's remarkable.

It's all just recounting in incredible detail, John's recollections from the last meal that he ate with Jesus before Good Friday. Yeah. And it's done in, I guess since

we're on it, I do want to talk about that.

When you read John's account of Holy Thursday, you're reading the account of an eyewitness,

but you're also reading an account that is for a church that is very well developed.

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