Exodus 11-12
In those days, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt:
– This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.
It is like a distant announcement of the ceremony that Jesus celebrated, indicating that it is the Passover, that is, “The passage of God to bring his people out of slavery.”
But it is a horrible reading. To bring his spoiled and privileged people out of slavery, God kills a multitude of innocents. No, that is not the God of Jesus. It is an interpretation of Israel that should horrify us.
This passage should not be read,
it should not be read in any liturgical celebration,
because it is not only difficult to explain,
but completely contrary to the message and the God of Jesus.
I believe that an alternative reading should be chosen, equally referring to the Eucharist and, in addition, endorsed by Jesus himself:
Exodus 15-16
Moses led Israel away from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.” Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
And Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord… for he has heard your grumbling against him… Who are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
In the evening, a flock of quail covered the entire camp; in the morning, there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew evaporated, a fine, frost-like powder appeared on the desert surface. Seeing this, the Israelites asked:
–What is this?
For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them:
–It is the bread that the Lord gives you to eat….
The Israelites called that substance “manna”: it was white, like coriander seeds, and tasted like honey cakes.
The Israelites ate manna for forty years, until they reached inhabited land. They ate manna until they crossed the border of Canaan.
Jesus himself referred to this scene, applying it to himself: (Jn 6:49)
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert and died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that whoever eats it will not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever;
And for us, it is a beautiful image of Jesus: just as Yahweh fed (according to the faith of Israel) his people in the desert, the Father now feeds us: Jesus is the one who nourishes our faith, our hope, and our service. We feed on Him. We feed on His Word and His Spirit, which is given to us very especially in the gathering of the brothers, when we share the Word, when we eat His bread together and drink from His cup.
1 CORINTHIANS 11:23-26
I received a tradition, which comes from the Lord and which, in turn, I have transmitted to you:
That on the night the Lord Jesus was to be handed over, he took bread and, giving thanks, broke it and said:
– “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
He did the same with the cup after supper, saying:
– “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Therefore, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
We know that this is the oldest Eucharistic text, written around the year 55, probably from Ephesus, and therefore earlier than the writing of the gospels. With this reading, we connect with deep emotion our Eucharist with the long chain of Eucharists celebrated by Christians from the beginning, from the communities of Paul, in the memory of the Lord Jesus as he entrusted us.
It is very significant that the four Eucharistic formulas we have (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Corinthians) are different from each other, and that none of them is the same as the one we use today in our Eucharist. This could be a good reason for reflection for those who understand the “formula of the Consecration” as quasi-magical words that produce the miracle.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.