A new Passover; a new covenant

By Msgr Michael de Verteuil

Chair, Liturgical Commission

The Israelites had been in Egypt for some generations. They were suffering, oppressed by the Egyptians, and wanted to escape.

The Lord comes to their help by calling a young man, Moses, who will lead them to freedom. The night they were to escape the Lord instructed them (Ex 12:1-11) to eat a meal of symbolic items, the centrepiece of which was the lamb without blemish.

This meal was to be celebrated for all generations and is known as the Passover meal when the destroying angel had passed over their homes (saved because marked by the lamb’s blood) but struck the homes of the Egyptians (Ex 12:28).

The Israelites then fled, the Lord coming to their help by leading them safely through the Red Sea. They were delivered from their enemy, the pharaoh, and were to remember and celebrate this deliverance forever in the Passover meal.

The Passover meal was celebrated in memory of the great acts of God in saving the Israelites. But it was not simply a matter of remembering, for the Jews saw it as making present the long-ago event for those who had not been present at the actual event.

So, in the year 2025, for example, when Jews celebrate the Passover which happened around 3,400 years ago, the deliverance that God won for them then is present for them now as they celebrate their freedom.

Having escaped Egypt and on their journey through the desert, God offers a covenant through Moses to the people: “I will be your God, you will be my people.” The people accept it, and the covenant is sealed in animal blood.

We leap forward to approximately 32 AD. Jesus is speaking to the crowd (Jn 6:51-58): “Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life…For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”

How was He to make this possible, this eating of His Body and drinking of His Blood? He revealed this at the Last Supper when, celebrating a Passover meal, He took bread and wine and said, “Take this and eat, this is my body…Drink from this, all of you, for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant…” (Mt 26:26-28). By these actions and words, He made possible what He offered in John 6. He had said that His Body was real food, His Blood real drink and here it was—under the appearances of bread and wine.

But there was more. Remember that this was a Passover meal and they were making memorial of the great act of God in the deliverance from Egypt. But Jesus adds a twist, “Do this in memory of me.”

No longer was the memorial to be of the great act of God in Egypt but the great act of God in Jesus Christ. As the memorial of the Passover made the fruits of the deliverance from Pharaoh present for all who partook in the meal, so now this memorial we celebrate in the Mass makes present for all who celebrate it the fruits of the deliverance won for us by the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

And there is still more. The Israelites sealed their new relationship with God as God’s covenanted people by the blood of animals, “the blood of the covenant”, Moses proclaims (Ex 24:3-8).

But Jesus speaks of a new covenant and this covenant is sealed in His Blood, the Blood of the unblemished Lamb of God. In receiving the Blood of Christ, (which we do whenever we receive Communion for we receive both the Body and Blood of Jesus even if we receive under one species), we are saying ‘yes’ again to the covenant—“I will be your God, you will be my people”—for we receive the Blood of the new and eternal covenant.