We gather at 7:30 p.m. to remember the night Jesus had a last meal together with his friends, the same evening on which he also took a towel and a basin of water and washed the feet of his followers, the night he gave a mandatum (a new “mandate” and thus the word maundy): to love one another. On this night, the night of his betrayal and arrest, we remember and do likewise as we wash one another’s feet and gather around the Lord’s table in a more intimate way. The liturgy concludes with the stripping of the altar, a reminder of our Lord’s humiliation at the hands of his enemies.