The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.
…
it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight.
They shall take some of its blood
and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel
of every house in which they partake of the lamb.
Tonight we celebrate the feast of our deliverance. We celebrate the sacrifice of the true Pascal Lamb, Jesus Christ, and pray to have the doorposts and the lintel of our hearts anointed with his precious blood.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (see First Corinthians 5:7-8)
In the first Passover the gods of Egypt were symbolically destroyed. Everything not ransomed by the blood of the lamb was under judgment. In our new feast idolatry is uprooted and sin is destroyed. But we are not swept away with our idols and are sins as the Egyptians were because we "were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot" (see First Peter 1:18-19).
Jesus himself bore the covenant curses accrued by all of the infidelity of all of the people of the world in all times and places. He himself was the first born son who was slain. This was an offering which God always deserved, as he indicated to Abraham about Isaac, but which man was never sufficiently free enough and self-possessed enough to offer. Jesus was different. He was truly without any blemish of sin and entirely free to offer his life in a perfect act of love. Because of this it was impossible that death should hold him (see Acts 2:24). In bearing the curse he restored the blessings that were meant to be the inheritance of Israel, God's firstborn (see Exodus 4:22). The new Israel, the Church (see Galatians 6:16), has truly become a light to the nations in which the blessings promised first to Abraham are now available to all. We not only evade the killing blow of the angel but we also gain the blessings of the covenant by keeping this new and perpetual feast.
“This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Unlike those in the original Passover for whom the participation in the lamb was merely a symbolic reality, those in the New Covenant who partake of the lamb are infused with everything that he is, and in particular all of the power that his death and resurrection have made available to us. The blood is now not merely on the outside shielding us even as our inner world remains unredeemed. The blood now courses through us, making us one with Jesus. The body now feeds us and gives us strength until we finally become what we receive, the body of Jesus himself.
“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
We must allow Jesus to come to us an intimately and personally as he desires to come. Like Peter we are right to feel a little embarrassed that the Lord would want to wash our feet. We don't like to notice such unpleasantly unpresentable realities. It forces us to come to terms with both our own humanity and the breathtaking gentleness and humility of Jesus. It reveals to us the path which our own lives must henceforth take, which is one of service and sacrifice, not of conquest.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.
We can imagine Jesus as himself washing our feet whenever we receive him in the Eucharist. In giving himself to us in this way he not only asks but also empowers us to give ourselves as food for others, bread for the life of the world. This is how the world is meant to know that we are Christians. May we receive the gifts of this feast with faith in the power of the inner realities, though they remain veiled to the senses, knowing that in them Jesus is truly made present.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.
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