When the Church uses the term, the “Paschal mystery,” she is referring to the mystery of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. The word “paschal” comes from the Greek pascha , meaning Passover, so it is the “Passover mystery.” The Jewish Passover meal had its own rules and regulations. Today the meal is called the Passover Seder , from the Hebrew word for “order.” That order revolved around four cups of wine, all of which must be drunk. Jesus, however, did not do this that Thursday night at the Lord’s Supper , His final Passover on earth. The details are described in the book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist , by Brant Pitre, Ph.D., Chapter 6 titled “The Fourth Cup and the Death of Jesus.”   Below is a quick summary. From the descriptions in the New Testament of how Jesus celebrated that last Passover meal, which we now know of as the Last Supper, three of the four cups can be identified. But what Jesus does differently is that he does not drink the fourth cup....

At Our Lady of Lourdes, we continue our Lenten Parish Retreat. This fourth week of Lent our theme is “The Bread of the Face of God,” a theme from the Book of Exodus.       After the Exodus, when the children of Israel were in the wilderness of Sinai, God instructed Moses to set up a sanctuary (the Tabernacle) that He might dwell in the midst of the people ( Ex. 25:8 ), according to a vision Moses was given of the heavenly sanctuary ( Ex. 25,9, 40 ; Heb. 8:4 ). One of the three sacred objects to be placed in the inner Holy Place was a golden table of bread ( Ex.25:23-30 ), patterned after the heavenly reality Moses was given to see. The description is sometimes translated “showbread” or “Bread of the Presence.” However, Hebrew word panim literally means “face,” or, “Bread of the Face [of God].”       The table would not only hold the bread, but also hold bowls for the pouring of libations of wine, as well as plates of incense as the bread and ...

We continue our Lenten Parish Retreat, and this third week of Lent our theme is “Raining Down Bread from Heaven.” It comes from Exodus 16:4 where the Lord says to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.” The “manna” given in the wilderness is the precursor, the type, of the Bread of Life that Christ gives us, the Eucharist.       The setting in Exodus is that the 12 tribes of Jacob/Israel had now come forth from Egypt. The Passover deliverance had spared their first-born sons from death when the destroying angel “passed over” their homes upon seeing the blood of the slain lamb on the wood of their doorposts. ( Exodus 12 & 13 .)       Then, in Exodus, the people were next miraculously delivered through the waters of the Red Sea ( Exodus 14 & 15 ), a “type” or precursor of Christian Baptism. But now the people had fallen into complaining. They were hungry. They even blamed Moses for bringing them out of Egypt! In respons...

We are now in the second week of Lent. The Gospel for Sunday, Week 2 of Lent, is the Transfiguration of Christ, as recorded by St. Mark in his Gospel ( 9:2-10 ).       The First Reading at Mass is from Genesis 22 , the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Although Isaac was not killed after all (God’s mercy), a sacrifice consists in the offering and not in the slaughter, so the sacrifice of love was indeed made.       From the earliest days of Christianity, the Church Fathers saw this sacrifice of Isaac as a type, an image, a foreshadowing of the Passion and death of Christ on the Cross. St. John Chrysostom (AD 344/354-407) wrote, “All these things were types of the Cross. That is why Christ said: Abraham rejoiced that he might see My day; he saw it, and was glad. How did he see it, considering that he [Abraham] was born so many years before? In type and in shadow.... The reality had to be depicted beforehand in type.”   ...