Moses’ Passover is a step toward freedom!

Jesus’ Eucharist is our new Passover celebrating a new freedom 
 
The celebration of our Paschal Triduum will begin on Holy Thursday with the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which will be on April 9 this year. The Last Supper was Jesus’ last celebration of the Jewish Passover and the first celebration of our Eucharist. Our Jewish brothers and sisters will finalize their celebration of Passover or Pesach one week later.
 
Jewish freedom from the slavery of the Egyptians is a huge event and will never be forgotten by the Jews. God freed his people from slavery by first asking the pharaoh kindly and then with some arm twisting with nine plagues, but the pharaoh didn’t budge. God’s last step is his strongest statement that finally breaks the pharaohs will to enslave the Jews. To set his people free from physical slavery, God sent a 10 ^th and final plague, the death of the Egyptian firstborn.
 
To remember, and to prepare for this liberating event of the 10 ^th plague, God gave Moses instructions on how the last step before their freedom from slavery was to take place, the celebration of the Passover meal. The meal required a special lamb to eat and have the blood of the lamb spread on their doorposts. Death would pass over and not touch the families whose homes were marked by the blood of the lamb.
 
The blood of the lamb is the path to freedom and life. The blood of the lamb marks this covenant. People still gather today to celebrate the Pesach, a Jewish term for the Passover festival, and remember their newfound freedom. They eat a special meal called a Seder and have many other customs for their weeklong celebration.
 
Find a quiet place, a comfortable place, and sit down with your Bible and spend some time with God and this passage from scripture. Pray and reflect on what happened then and the similarities with the Last Supper and our Lord on the cross atop of Calvary. Please open your Bibles to Exodus, 12, 1-14, the first reading for the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper and see the love and power of God.
 
Just as a summary, here are some, not all, of the similarities between the Jewish Passover and the first Holy Thursday and Good Friday:
 
- The Jewish Passover lamb needed to be young and without blemishes, pure. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God (according to John the Baptist), was holy and pure, there was no sin in his life.
 
- The Passover lamb was to be sacrificed at a family gathering and the blood was to be spread on their wooden door frames. Jesus was crucified in front of a crowd on Calvary and his blood drenched the wood of the cross becomes our door to eternal life.
 
- The Passover lamb was a memorial and a meal to be eaten. Jesus, the lamb of God, at his last Passover meal, the Last Supper, said “Take and eat, this is my body. … Drink of it, this is my blood” and “Do this in memory of me.”
 
- The blood of the lamb from the Passover meal celebrates freedom from slavery. The Eucharist, where we partake of the blood of the Lamb of God celebrates freedom from the greatest slavery, sin.
 
God is the greatest teacher. He begins from what we know, what is familiar to us, the Jewish Passover, and then, little by little, he leads us to something new, our new Passover, the Eucharist. The journey from Moses’ Passover memorial meal to the Lord’s final celebration of Passover, the Last Supper, takes hundreds of years, but it is worth it! Jesus’ transformation of the old into the new, the paschal meal, memorial and celebration, of the Eucharist continues to give live and love at every celebration.  
 
I invite you to kneel before the tabernacle in your parish and pray to Jesus, the Lamb of God. “Thank you, Jesus, for being the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Help me to grow in awe of your real presence and love more each day. Amen.”


I invite you to read the following quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
 
1362 The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice, in the liturgy of the Church that is his body. In all the Eucharistic prayers, we find after the words of institution a prayer called the anamnesis or memorial.
 
1363 In the sense of Sacred Scripture, the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.
 
1364 In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, it commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present. "As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out."