It was my dear friend Egon (now, sadly, departed) who first pointed out the meaning of the name. When I was a child, I assumed church people were, for weird reasons of their own, mispronouncing "Monday Thursday." That made little sense, so I paid no attention to the weird phrase. Egon knew more Latin than I did and said it came from "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you").
Interesting stuff, because it's from John 13:34.
John 13 begins with the well-known incident of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. What isn't so well-known is that the job of foot-washing should have gone to a slave or to the least honorable person in the room (if no slave was available). That would have been John, probably a teenager. Few preachers point out that John is telling of his own failing here. And fewer notice the next place we see John: leaning against Jesus' chest.
There's a lot of stuff written about Peter's denial and about Judas being treated well right up to the end, but this little bit about the teenager who didn't do his job and still was a friend—this reaches out to me.
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