A REFLECTION FOR EASTER SUNDAY
At the Jewish Passover Seder, it is traditional for the youngest male present to ask the question: “Ma nishtana ha lyla ha zeh mikkol hallaylot?—Why is this night different from all other nights? Little do they realize that their rituals and ceremony in remembrance of things long past are in fact nothing more than the foreshadowing of a new ceremony that Our Lord performed at the Last Supper, and that would be continued by the New Testament priests until the end of time “in remembrance of me.”
The Seder meal on the eve of Passover commemorates the deliverance of the Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt. Moses had been trying in vain to persuade the Pharaoh to free them from their bondage, but in spite of commands by God himself to “Let my people go,” the Pharaoh was stubbornly unrelenting. Nine plagues had smitten the land of Egypt, but after each one Pharaoh had again “hardened his heart” and continued to refuse them freedom. There now followed the tenth and most terrible plague in which the firstborn of every living creature in Egypt would be slain by the Angel of Death. Moses, however, was warned in advance to prepare a “lamb without blemish” that would be sacrificed to God, and whose blood was to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the Hebrews so that God might “pass over” their houses. And so they were spared. After the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn the Pharaoh finally relented, and the Hebrews, delivered from their slavery, set off on their journey to the Promised Land.
The Jews had continued the tradition of sacrificing a lamb known as the Korban Pesach (Paschal Sacrifice) in the temple of Jerusalem each anniversary of the first Passover. One of the main features of the Seder meal continues to be a roasted lamb, symbolizing the Paschal Victim. At the Last Supper, our Lord himself would have followed this tradition, thus beginning his fulfillment of the ancient events in the land of Egypt. He would now become himself the unblemished, sinless Lamb of God and Paschal Victim, offered to God for the salvation of his people. His own blood would now be sprinkled, averting the avenging angel, delivering mankind from bondage, taking away the sins of the world. The firstborn Son of God alone would die and mankind would be spared. “He is the true Lamb who hath taken away the sins of the world. Who by dying hath destroyed our death; and by rising again hath bestowed a new life upon us.” In this new life, this new Covenant, God would be appeased in his wrath, he would spare us, and “let his people go,” freeing them from the bondage of sin to resume their journey to the Promised Land of heaven.
Meanwhile, the Old Covenant came to an abrupt end. The sacrifice of the Paschal Victim at the temple in Jerusalem had been interrupted that year as the veil of the temple was rent asunder at the death of God’s Son. The temple sacrifices were of no more value, and soon, even the temple itself would be destroyed. As for the Paschal Victim, it would continue to be commemorated until the end of time, no longer as a foreshadowing by an actual lamb in the temple, nor symbolically by the Seder meal, but in their fulfillment as the perfect Sacrifice of the Mass. The Paschal Lamb that we would consume at the Mass in Holy Communion would no longer be a symbol, but the actual Body of Christ, the Lamb of God. This would be no mere commemoration of a human act that occupied a single moment of a dimly remembered past, but the perpetual re-presentation of an act of God, eternal in nature and as fresh and full of grace today as it was on Calvary.
All the hopes of the Old Testament were fulfilled at the Last Supper and in the events that followed. And now on Easter morning “the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” On the glorious dawning of a new era we offer our thankful praises to the Paschal Victim offered for our salvation on Calvary and in the Mass. The Seder of the Last Supper heralded mankind’s transition from the Old Testament to the New, from prophecies to fulfillment, from shadows to eternal light. This is what made that particular night different from all other nights.
No comments:
Post a Comment