By Clement Harrold

March 12, 2026

At the end of our Lenten journey every year, at the evening Mass on Holy Thursday, we celebrate the institution of the Holy Eucharist. But for many of us, the Church’s choice of Gospel reading for this Mass can seem a little strange.  

Rather than giving us Matthew’s, or Mark’s, or Luke’s account of Jesus consecrating the bread and wine at the Last Supper, the Church instead has us read from the one Gospel that doesn’t even mention the institution of the Eucharist—the Gospel of John!

This raises the broader question of why exactly John chooses to leave out this pivotal event. If Catholics are right about the Eucharist, shouldn’t its institution be the very last thing that John would omit?

A Deeper Symbolism

In his excellent book on the Eucharist, Lawrence Feingold directly addresses this very question:

Why does John not give an account of the institution of the Eucharist? The most reasonable explanation is that he is interested in supplementing the synoptic gospels by giving accounts of things they omitted. Hence, he adds the Bread of Life Discourse and the washing of the feet but omits the institution narrative already transmitted in four accounts [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul]. A second possible complementary reason is that John was writing later, at which time it was considered prudent to maintain a veil of secrecy over the most sacred heart of Christian worship. This practice, known as the disciplina arcani, was common in the early Church. ... The tendency to cover the most sacred of things behind an allusive veil may have led St. John to speak about the Eucharist through the image of the washing of the feet of the disciples rather than giving a direct account of the institution of the Eucharist. All that is said about the washing of the feet could also be said about the Eucharist. (The Eucharist, pp. 82-83)

This explanation helps us clarify what John’s omission of the institution narrative is not about: It is not about John telling us that the sacraments don’t matter. If it were, then John’s attempt would have backfired spectacularly, because chapter 6 of his Gospel—the Bread of Life discourse—contains the most richly Eucharistic passage of all four Gospels.

So what is John doing?  

Feingold offers two possible and non-competing explanations. The second of these (saying that John left out the words of institution to preserve the secrecy of the early Church’s liturgy) is plausible but speculative. Given this, Feingold’s first explanation seems like the more promising way forward.

Now in general we should be careful to avoid overly confident claims as to why a particular evangelist does or does not describe a particular event.  

While John leaves out the institution of the Eucharist and many other things besides, he also includes many things that don’t appear in the synoptic gospels. The raising of Lazarus, for example, is the greatest of Jesus’ signs, yet it receives no mention in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.  

Why is this?  

The short answer is that we don’t know, and so we’re left to speculate.  

One possible explanation is that the synoptic evangelists were writing earlier, and so they wanted to protect the identities of Lazarus and his sisters from the Jewish authorities. John, by contrast, might be writing at a later point when he has more freedom to share the details of what took place.

While this sort of practical explanation might hold true in some instances, we should also be open to more theological explanations of the kind outlined by Feingold.  

These theological explanations help us to see that, although there are a lot of important events in the synoptic Gospels that don’t appear in John, this doesn’t mean that John ignores those events entirely.  

It has long been noted, for example, that there are no exorcisms in John’s Gospel.  

Instead, John presents the Cross as the ultimate cosmic exorcism through which “the ruler of this world [shall] be cast out” (John 12:31). Or again, John never mentions the Transfiguration, but he does portray the crucifixion itself as the climactic epiphany of Trinitarian glory.

Given this, it seems reasonable to suppose that something similar is going on with John’s decision to leave out the institution of the Eucharist. John does this not to suggest that the Eucharist is unimportant, but rather to invite us to think about the Eucharist in a deeper way. 

Still a Passover Meal

Before unpacking that deeper symbolism, it’s worth briefly addressing the much-contested question of whether or not the Last Supper as described in John’s Gospel is a Passover meal.  

In the three synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist is explicitly presented as taking place within the context of a Passover supper (see Matt 26:17-19; Mark 14:12, 14, 16; Luke 22:7, 8, 11, 13, 15).  

Here we should remember that, in the Jewish reckoning of time, a new calendar day begins once the sun goes down. Hence, in the synoptic Gospels, the preparation for the Passover meal begins on the afternoon of 14th of Nisan, and the Last Supper takes place after sunset, which is the start of the 15th of Nisan.

In John’s Gospel, however, things are not so simple.

As Feingold summarizes in his book, there are four principal arguments which might suggest that the Last Supper in John’s Gospel is not a Passover meal:  

1. John 13:1-2 seems to imply that the Last Supper took place before the Feast of the Passover.  
2. John 18:28 suggests that the Jewish authorities were going to “eat the Passover” after Jesus’s crucifixion, which means the Passover feast cannot have taken place on the night before Jesus died.  
3. John 19:14 describes the date of Jesus’ crucifixion as “the day of Preparation of the Passover.” This implies that Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan and that the Passover wouldn’t begin until after the sun went down.  

It seems unlikely that the Sanhedrin could have assembled to condemn Jesus if the Passover feast was already underway.

What are we to make of these four charges?  

One theory put forward by some scholars is that John has simply rearranged the historical facts in order to make a theological point. According to this theory, John deliberately sets things up so that Jesus is crucified on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan. John does this because he wants to present Jesus as making His sacrifice at the exact same time that thousands of lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple (and later taken home for eating as part of the Passover feast).  

In this way, John highlights Jesus’ role as the new and eternal Passover lamb (more on that in a bit!).  

While this theory has some theological appeal, it suffers from two major drawbacks.  

1. It ignores the fact that, although John never explicitly describes his Last Supper as a Passover meal, his Last Supper does include a number of elements that are typical of a Passover celebration (e.g., the solemnity of the occasion, the fact that they are reclining at table, the fact that the meal takes place at night, and the fact that they dip bread into some kind of mixture).
2. More importantly, we should be skeptical of any theory that asserts one of the evangelists has seriously meddled with the historical facts.

How, then, are we to reconcile John with the synoptics on the question of whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal?

Here Feingold offers a number of different potential explanations.  

We’ll simply summarize the explanation he finds most plausible, which is that the differences between John and the synoptics present only an apparent contradiction, not a real one. Feingold shows that a compelling rebuttal exists for each of the four arguments given against John’s Last Supper being a Passover meal.

The first argument concerning John 13:1-2 is not a strong argument because, in Feingold’s words, “this chronological indication may well refer directly to Jesus’s awareness that His hour has come, not to the date of the Last Supper itself” (p. 92).

The second argument based on John 18:28 can be explained by the fact that the phrase “eat the Passover” referred not just to the eating of the Passover lamb on the 15th of Nisan, but also to the eating of unleavened bread, which took place on all seven days of Passover (cf., Deut 16:2-3).  

The third argument can quickly be cleared up when we realize that the term “the day of Preparation of the Passover” admits of more than one meaning. While it sounds to us like it’s referring to the day before the Passover, in Jewish terminology every Friday was known as the day of preparation (for the Sabbath). Hence, it’s quite possible that John 19:14 is simply referring to “the Friday that falls within Passover week.”

Finally, the fourth argument is unproven, and in fact we have historical evidence that Jewish law actually required false prophets to be executed during one of the major pilgrim festivals (such as Passover) in order to make a public example of them.

While much more could be said on this subject, the foregoing conclusions give us the confidence that John and the synoptic Gospels need not be interpreted as being in contradiction with one another. 

It can be plausibly argued that both John and the synoptics agree that Jesus’ disciples made preparations for the Last Supper on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan. After the sun went down—at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan—Jesus and His disciples commenced their Passover meal together. Later that night Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, and He was crucified the following day.

Beholding the Lamb of God  

We’ve taken a long exegetical detour, but now it’s time to bring our reflections together.

John does not include the institution of the Eucharist explicitly, yet his account of the Last Supper, and his Gospel as a whole, remain profoundly Eucharistic.

In his account of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, for example, John offers us a miniature parable of Jesus’ entire ministry: Jesus removes His garments (Incarnation/kenosis), washes our uncleanness (saving death on the Cross), puts His garments back on (Resurrection), and returns to His place at the table (Ascension). This whole scene has rich Eucharistic overtones: instead of saying “This is my Body given for you,” Jesus shows us the giving of His Body by getting on His hands and knees and washing the disciples' feet.  

Even more important than the foot washing, however, is John’s overarching symbolism of Jesus as the Lamb of God.  

As John the Baptist proclaims at the very beginning of the Gospel, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29; cf. 1:36). This explicit proclamation is echoed in other details in John’s Gospel, which is structured around three separate Passover feasts.

(Interestingly, all three of these Passovers are closely tied to Eucharistic scenes: the first falls immediately after the wedding at Cana; the second occurs at the time of the feeding of the five thousand and the Bread of Life discourse; the third takes place at the time of the Last Supper and the crucifixion.)

Examples of Passover imagery include the fact that none of Jesus’ bones are broken on the Cross, just as none of the Passover lamb’s bones were to be broken (see John 19:33; cf. Exod 12:46).

John also records how, on the Cross, Jesus is given sour wine on a hyssop branch, the same utensil used to smear the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of one’s house (see John 19:29; cf., Ex 12:22).

Finally, John is the only one of the four evangelists to highlight the blood and water that flows from Christ’s side (see John 19:34)—a description strongly reminiscent of the Passover ritual with its emphasis on the saving blood of the sacrificial lambs and goats.  

The upshot of all this is that John invites us to read his Last Supper account in light of his Gospel as a whole.  

When we do this, we realize that John does not consider the institution of the Eucharist unimportant. Rather, he considers it so important that he wants to convey to us the profound significance of what it means to behold Jesus as the new and eternal Passover lamb whose Precious Blood redeems us from the slavery of sin and death, and whose Body we must consume in the Eucharistic feast.