The Perpetual Passover Feast

Passover this year begins at sundown on April 12, the eve of Palm Sunday. In preparation, I’ve been purging the leaven from my life (Lent), perusing Passover recipes, and carrying out the spring cleaning commanded in the Book of Exodus. My Jewish side comes out this time of year.

In truth, I am Jewish all year long since Christ grafted me onto the root stock of His chosen people at my baptism; but Passover is special. The longest-continuously-celebrated feast in human history, it began some 3,300 years ago, on the eve of the Hebrew’s flight from slavery to freedom, and its celebration continues to the present day. 

Jews under the old covenant are bound by Yahweh’s command in Exodus 12: “You shall observe this rite as an ordinance for you and your sons forever.” But they can’t do so, since the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, making the requisite animal sacrifice impossible. Since then, Jewish families have observed a likeness of Passover. Like Protestants practicing the Lord’s Supper, it’s a symbol—because the reality God commanded in perpetuity resides elsewhere.

The perpetual Passover feast only makes sense to Catholics. The Passover sacrifice of the Lamb has continued unbroken on the altar since Jesus sealed the new covenant on the Cross. What is a symbol for Jews and Protestants exists in its fullness only in the Eucharist, the Paschal feast. (Pascha is Greek for Passover.) 

Passover is gratuitous for Catholics because we celebrate it every day in the Mass. But it’s a beautiful backdrop, adding rich detail and poetic resonance to our celebration of the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. Many Christians have begun to study Passover more deeply, even reenacting the Last Supper. The Scriptures, songs, customs, and ritual foods of Passover create a landscape through which we can pass on our way to Christ’s last Passover supper on that fateful night in Jerusalem.

To learn more about Passover is to enter more deeply, more consciously, into the Passover sacrifice of Jesus that we celebrate at every Mass, with deepest poignancy on Holy Thursday. The readings that bookend the Triduum are all about Moses and the Israelites passing through the sea as God delivers them from slavery (the Exodus story). We sing the deliverance psalms and light the Paschal candle, all new covenant fulfillments of the original Passover ordinances.

Passover is the feast of redemption, when God freed His beloved people from bitter slavery in Egypt and set them en route to a country that would be their own, under the authority of no one but Him. It’s when the One God was introduced to the world, which had previously been giving allegiance to mere creatures like bulls, cats, and the sun. 

God used the Exodus, and the Passover that marked it, to prepare His people for Christ’s ultimate triumph over sin, and for the Eucharist, the means that we may partake of it. Passover is not a foreign tradition; it’s the instruction in our salvation, written by the hand of God. 

As the feast of Passover drew near, Jesus was aware that his hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. (John) 

The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?”(Matthew)

The disciples went forth, entered the city, and found everything just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.(Mark) 

When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table along with the apostles, saying, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke)

The last supper of Jesus with His apostles, the institution of the Eucharist, and the climax of His sacrifice on the Cross all happened, by eternal design, during the feast of Passover. It was necessary for us that it be so; we couldn’t have otherwise made sense of it. Centuries of Passover celebrations prepared the Jews for the Eucharist, passed on through the early Church to us.

From Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac to the revelation at Emmaus, God had been training His people to recognize their salvation in the strange covenantal signs that He planted along the way, Passover being the golden landmark.

Jesus tried to tell His followers about eating flesh and drinking blood, but many couldn’t bear it. I am the bread of life, He says. I am the living bread, I am the bread of God which comes down from heaven. And then He got even more commanding: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. 

But the Twelve remained. They would only begin to make sense of Jesus’ ghastly words at the final Passover celebration. Passover was proven ground, well-walked territory. Each one of the apostles had celebrated Passover every year from birth. They knew every nook and cranny of it. When Jesus instructed the apostles to prepare for Passover, it must have been an enormous relief: “At last, something we understand!”

On that night, Jesus held up the unleavened bread at the Passover table, as every father of every Jewish family had done for over a thousand years. The apostles had the comfortable quilt of tradition wrapped around them, stitched with memories of a lifetime of Passover seders. But toward the end, Jesus said words that no father had ever said before, and the spell of familiarity was broken: This is my body.  

He’d said they must eat His flesh, and now He was saying that this striped and pierced (look at a piece of matzah) unleavened flatbread was Him. This cup of crimson wine was His blood, shared out over dinner. The last portion wouldn’t fall into place until the Crucifixion, when His flesh was sacrificed utterly and the last drop of His blood soaked into the Judean hillside. His death on the Cross infused life into the Passover elements of bread and wine, making them a living sacrament not a dead symbol. 

We have heard the “Paschal Mystery” proclaimed all our lives, and we’re about to hear it a lot more. On Easter Sunday we’ll hear, “Christians, to the Paschal Victim offer your thankful praises!” and “Christ, our Paschal Lamb has been sacrificed.” All the Easter prefaces will refer to “Christ, our Passover.” Passover is central to the whole Easter mystery. 

The great reward of learning about Passover is the realization that the Mass was prepared for us from the beginning. It didn’t spring out of medieval councils or theological universities; it was foreshadowed in antiquity, in God’s school of salvation. The Mass is not a cultural icon or a historical detail; it’s the living heart of our Catholic life. And Passover is the family history of the Mass.  The great reward of learning about Passover is the realization that the Mass was prepared for us from the beginning.Tweet This

This year, at the Triduum, recall the ancient Hebrew tradition of bread and wine, freely given to us for our salvation. Happy Passover.