During the last three days of holy-week the church celebrates the funeral obsequies of her Divine Spouse: and hence there are numerous signs of mourning in her temples, in her liturgy, and in the dress of her ministers. On thursday however, a passing gleam of heavenly light irradiates the solemn gloom in which she is enveloped: for on this day Jesus Christ, having loved his own even unto the end, instituted the holy sacrament, the staff of our pilgrimage, our solace in affliction, our strength in temptation, the source of all virtue, and the pledge of everlasting life. Accordingly the liturgy of holy-thursday bears the impress both of sorrow and of gladness: it is not unlike a fitful day of April in our northern climes, when the sun now bursts from the clouds which had concealed his brilliancy, and now once more the sky is shrouded in murky gloom--an apt emblem this of the over-changing state of man, who at one moment quaffs the inebriating cup of earthly joys, and yet a little, and it is dashed from his grasp; and sickness, sorrow and death are his portion. [Sidenote: its ancient form.] Anciently three masses used to be celebrated at Rome[57] on this day, as is evident from the sacramentary of pope Gelasius; and at all the three the Pope himself officiated. At the first the public penitents were absolved:[58] at the second the oils were blessed; the last (ad vespertinum officium) was intended to commemorate the institution of the blessed Sacrament. Public penance gradually declined in the western church after the seventh century; and the three masses are now reduced to one. That of the Sixtine chapel, at which the Pope assists, differs very little from ordinary Masses celebrated there, and the concourse of persons is generally very great. [Sidenote: Blessing of the oils at S. Peter's] [Sidenote: Communion under one kind.]