THE EUCHARIST SERIES
An Introduction to the “Eucharist Series”
The story of our faith as Catholics is that God has a GREAT LOVE for us: That even within God’s self, in the Trinity, there has always been a great love between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and that then that great love also then created us, and then became one of us in Jesus when Jesus was conceived by the holy Spirit and the power of the Most High (Luke 1) and was born to Mary his mother at Bethlehem. And this happened because God wanted to be close to us because he loves us.
And when Jesus grew up he went all over Israel, teaching and healing and loving the God’s people. And he went to those who were hurting and came close to them to heal them and teach them because he loves us. And we can read all about that in the New Testament.
And he gathered a group of men and women disciples who he taught to continue to spread his message and his love for all people after he would go beyond our sight.
And he taught this group to pray, so that we can talk to him, and come close to him.
And at the Last Supper he gave them the Mass where Catholics believe we truly receive Jesus and come close to him, in receiving his Body and Blood through the bread and wine that are blessed.
And in the end he died on the cross for us and Scripture says no greater love does someone have than to lay down their life for their friends and so even while he has gone beyond our sight, he is close to us. And we know he loves us enough to die for us so we know he is our friend.
and died for us (out of love – to reach out to us, to be close to us, to show us God’s great love for us.)
And then Matthew 28 he asked the disciples to baptize all people into this community of faith, the Church where we could come close to God and be loved by God and then share that love with all we meet.
And so as we begin this program on the Eucharist, let us remember we study the Eucharist because God loves us and has come among us in Jesus, and then started the Church so that he could continue to touch us with his grace even though he has gone beyond our sight in the Ascension.
Indeed, as we contemplate the great love of God that has given us a Savior born among us and then all the gifts of faith and the Church that he gave us to help us to come closer to God. And that our Savior wanted all of us to be born into this Church, this family of faith, it would be good to also contemplate that in our baptism into our Church, we say that the love of God even overcomes the natural separation between God and humanity, what we call “Original Sin.”
And we say that, in baptism and living the life of a Christian in the Church after baptism, that the “original separation” or “Original Sin” between us and God is taken away.
So that a because our Lord has been born as a baby has been born in a stable….a little baby born just for us. And because he is now close to us in our hearts since he has become one of us in our humanity, and so now we can understand God better. And we have all the stories from the four Gospels about Jesus to help us to better understand God and to be closer to God…and because Catholics even say the bread and wine become his Body and Blood and he will be right on the altar in a few minutes. And because of closeness to God through the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes to us individually and also through the Spirit of God resting with the Church and God’s people in all the sacraments and when two or three gather in Jesus’s name….because of these things we say that we who are baptized into this life of being a follower of Jesus in the Church have a radical closeness to God that is unique in the world.
And Catholics also are very radical in saying that we can come close to God through our own prayer and in our own heart in our own private time in private prayer, or reading the Bible or when we help others, but that we can ALSO be close to God through the Eucharist, and through the sacraments like confession or Last Rites or the Sacrament of the Sick….and when we are part of the community of faith
So that Catholics do not have an image of God who is impersonal or way above us, but that we have faith in our God has become one of us….just like us….so that God can relate to us and be CLOSE TO US. Wow. That’s radical.
And so Christians don’t just have to look at the underside of the clouds and wonder what God is like….Christians can read all about him in the New Testament…and Christians can receive him in the Eucharist and walk with him in the sacraments and the community of faith and when we call on the Holy Spirit.
And we say that in baptism, when we join the Church, we are brought into a life where we can have the barriers between us and God taken away through Jesus in the Bible, the Sacraments, the Church, the Eucharist, prayer and loving and helping others…..that through following Jesus we can have a CLOSE WALK WITH GOD.
And so we say that the barriers between us and God are taken away….and the official term for this is that we say that “ORIGINAL SIN” is taken away from us….which maybe should be called “original barrier”….that God and humanity just couldn’t get it right….and couldn’t connect right….until God became one of us in Jesus….and now God is our adopted Father and Jesus is our brother and we are family.
But that Jesus wanted us to continue to gather as the Church so that we could continue to be close to him and to help one another in the life of faith. And the Eucharist is part of that whole story: That God loves us and wants to come close to us. And the Eucharist is a very important part of our finding God and being loved by God and coming close to God and then trying to love others as ourselves. We will discover more on how that is true in this study on the Eucharist. -- Fr. Andy Aaron, July 2023
And when Jesus grew up he went all over Israel, teaching and healing and loving the God’s people. And he went to those who were hurting and came close to them to heal them and teach them because he loves us. And we can read all about that in the New Testament.
And he gathered a group of men and women disciples who he taught to continue to spread his message and his love for all people after he would go beyond our sight.
And he taught this group to pray, so that we can talk to him, and come close to him.
And at the Last Supper he gave them the Mass where Catholics believe we truly receive Jesus and come close to him, in receiving his Body and Blood through the bread and wine that are blessed.
And in the end he died on the cross for us and Scripture says no greater love does someone have than to lay down their life for their friends and so even while he has gone beyond our sight, he is close to us. And we know he loves us enough to die for us so we know he is our friend.
and died for us (out of love – to reach out to us, to be close to us, to show us God’s great love for us.)
And then Matthew 28 he asked the disciples to baptize all people into this community of faith, the Church where we could come close to God and be loved by God and then share that love with all we meet.
And so as we begin this program on the Eucharist, let us remember we study the Eucharist because God loves us and has come among us in Jesus, and then started the Church so that he could continue to touch us with his grace even though he has gone beyond our sight in the Ascension.
Indeed, as we contemplate the great love of God that has given us a Savior born among us and then all the gifts of faith and the Church that he gave us to help us to come closer to God. And that our Savior wanted all of us to be born into this Church, this family of faith, it would be good to also contemplate that in our baptism into our Church, we say that the love of God even overcomes the natural separation between God and humanity, what we call “Original Sin.”
And we say that, in baptism and living the life of a Christian in the Church after baptism, that the “original separation” or “Original Sin” between us and God is taken away.
So that a because our Lord has been born as a baby has been born in a stable….a little baby born just for us. And because he is now close to us in our hearts since he has become one of us in our humanity, and so now we can understand God better. And we have all the stories from the four Gospels about Jesus to help us to better understand God and to be closer to God…and because Catholics even say the bread and wine become his Body and Blood and he will be right on the altar in a few minutes. And because of closeness to God through the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes to us individually and also through the Spirit of God resting with the Church and God’s people in all the sacraments and when two or three gather in Jesus’s name….because of these things we say that we who are baptized into this life of being a follower of Jesus in the Church have a radical closeness to God that is unique in the world.
And Catholics also are very radical in saying that we can come close to God through our own prayer and in our own heart in our own private time in private prayer, or reading the Bible or when we help others, but that we can ALSO be close to God through the Eucharist, and through the sacraments like confession or Last Rites or the Sacrament of the Sick….and when we are part of the community of faith
So that Catholics do not have an image of God who is impersonal or way above us, but that we have faith in our God has become one of us….just like us….so that God can relate to us and be CLOSE TO US. Wow. That’s radical.
And so Christians don’t just have to look at the underside of the clouds and wonder what God is like….Christians can read all about him in the New Testament…and Christians can receive him in the Eucharist and walk with him in the sacraments and the community of faith and when we call on the Holy Spirit.
And we say that in baptism, when we join the Church, we are brought into a life where we can have the barriers between us and God taken away through Jesus in the Bible, the Sacraments, the Church, the Eucharist, prayer and loving and helping others…..that through following Jesus we can have a CLOSE WALK WITH GOD.
And so we say that the barriers between us and God are taken away….and the official term for this is that we say that “ORIGINAL SIN” is taken away from us….which maybe should be called “original barrier”….that God and humanity just couldn’t get it right….and couldn’t connect right….until God became one of us in Jesus….and now God is our adopted Father and Jesus is our brother and we are family.
But that Jesus wanted us to continue to gather as the Church so that we could continue to be close to him and to help one another in the life of faith. And the Eucharist is part of that whole story: That God loves us and wants to come close to us. And the Eucharist is a very important part of our finding God and being loved by God and coming close to God and then trying to love others as ourselves. We will discover more on how that is true in this study on the Eucharist. -- Fr. Andy Aaron, July 2023
Session 5: The Passover and the
Exodus and the Mass & The
Eucharistic Miracle in Buenos Aires in 1996
Why is Jesus called “The Lamb of God” during prayers in the mass? Well, “lambs” were a part
of the story of the Jewish people fleeing Egypt and slavery in the Book of Exodus. In that story,
lambs were sacrificed, and their blood put over the lintels of the doors of the Jewish people as
part of their story of gaining freedom from slavery in Egypt. This story is remembered every
year by the Jewish people in the celebration of PASSOVER.
The story is one from the Old Testament and it is LONG LONG ago. About 1200 BC so about
3200 years ago.
And the people of Isreal had come to Egypt a few years before during a famine in Isreal. Egypt
had the Nile River so they always had water to raise grain, they didn’t depend on the rain.
But then the head of Egypt, the Pharoah, made the Isrealites into slaves.
And at times, after enslaving the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Egyptians, according to what we
know, would order the death of all newborn male infants from time to time, in order to control
the growth of the Hebrew slave population. During one of these times tradition has it that
Moses’s parents put him in a reed basket and floated him down the Nile River hoping someone
would take him and raise him.
And he was found and raised, in the end, by an Egyptian woman who, in fact, was in the
Egyptian court, she was an important person in the palace in Egypt, and Moses was raised in an
environment of great weath and comfort like a prince.
At a certain point Moses kills an Egyptian man and flees Egypt. He ends up in a place called
MIDIAN which is now in Saudi Arabia and was about 400 miles from Egypt.
One day Moses is tending the sheep of his father-in-law, for he had married a woman in Midian
and he sees a bush on a mountain nearby and the bush is on-fire but not being consumed by the
fire.
And from the bush God hears a voice. And first God tells Moses to take off his shoes because
he is on holy ground. And God says he is the God of Isreal.
And then God asks Moses to help the people get out of slavery. God says:
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of
their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue
them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and
spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites,
Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites….So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring
my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3: 7-10
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of
Egypt?”
And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent
you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers
has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent
me to you.’”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
So Moses goes to Egypt, and there are all these conversations with the King of Egypt, the
Pharoah, where God is trying to get Pharoah to let the Isrealites go free. And in order to do that
the story says that God sends all kinds of terrible things to happen to the Egyptians.
And the last terrible thing is that all the first born sons of the Egyptians died, but that the
Hebrews were warned to put the blood of lambs over their doors in order to protect them their
first born sons. We hear:
(The Lord then told Moses) “Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go forth through
Egypt. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on
his throne to the firstborn of the slave-girl who is at the handmill as well as all the firstborn of
the animals.
Then there will be loud wailing throughout the land of Egypt, such as has never been, nor will
ever be again.
But among all the Israelites, among human beings and animals alike, not even a dog will growl,
so that you may know that the LORD distinguishes between Egypt and Israel.
All these servants of yours will then come down to me and bow down before me, saying: Leave,
you and all your followers! Then I will depart.” With that he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot
anger. Exodus 11: 4-10
And after this last action by God in Egypt the Hebrews finally fled and got out of Egypt. And
this escape from slavery is still remembered by Jewish people every year in the spring in a
celebration called “PASSOVER.”
And at the Passover celebration from the time of Moses till the time of Jesus, the Jewish people
in every family would kill a lamb to remember the blood of the lambs protecting them from
losing their firstborn sons. And they would eat the lamb right before the Passover meal.
And, in addition, in terms of sacrificing animals, the Jewish people did not just sacrifice animals
at Passover time, but, in the time of Jesus, they also had the tradition of sacrificing animals at
the Temple in Jerusalem as an offering to God when someone had sinned and they wanted to
reconcile themselves to God. The animal was sacrificed and the remains were burned, not
eaten. And this “sacrifice” was to put oneself back into rightness of relationship with God.
And this was a VERY common practice. Some scholars say that up to a million animals were
sacrificed at the Temple the week of Passover in ancient days but these sacrifices happened at
the Temple all year long. The Temple was the one place for the Jewish people where the
animals were sacrificed by the priests to put oneself right with God, while at Passover, every
family sacrificed a lamb to remember the blood of the lambs that saved the first-born sons at the
time of the escape from slavery in Egypt.
One can see a reference to the practice of animal sacrifices at the Temple in the New Testament
in Matthew 21:12-13 where Jesus is at the Temple and he confronts “money-changers” and
people selling animals. The money changers were there to assist people in making animal
sacrifices at the Temple. And perhaps Jesus was angry with them because the actual tradition at
the time was that to make in “offering to God” to “put oneself right with God” with an animal
sacrifice was to raise the animal from birth and then to take that animal to them Temple
yourself, after putting in all the effort to raise the animal, and THEN to have the animal
sacrificed and the remains burnt as an offering to God.
But some people would just go to the Temple with some money and, with no real effort, pay
someone to offer the sacrifice of an animal that someone else had raised – and therefore avoid
the investment of their own time and energy.
THIS TRADITION of “sin offerings” or animal sacrifices made in order to reconcile oneself to
God ENDED in 70 AD when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
So anyway, in the time of Jesus, 1300 years after the escape from Egypt and going into Canaan,
that would become Israel, the Jewish people had celebrated Passover every spring with flat
unleavened bread and a sacrificed lamb and they also used other things like wine and bitter
herbs and things like that for the celebration.
And it was at a Passover celebration (Mt 26:17) that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples
when he gave it a twist and made it the “Last Supper” on the (Holy) Thursday before he died on
the cross on Good Friday.
Matthew says:
“On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (that’s Passover), the disciples
approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, “My appointed
time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”
The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered, and prepared the Passover.
And so the meal was prepared and Jesus and the disciples arrived at the Upper Room. And just
like at a Passover meal Jesus had unleavened or flat bread and also wine. The unleavened bread
was and is always a tradition at Passover meals because the Jewish people remembered that
they had been in such a hurry to flee from Egypt and the Egyptian army, that they had not
waited for their bread to rise, but had taken unleavened bread with them.
But Jesus gave this meal a twist. For on the night they celebrated this meal in Matthew 26, on
the night before Jesus was to die on the cross, there is no mention that Jesus had a sacrificed
lamb in the Upper Room.
But instead Jesus is there, the one who would be sacrificed on the cross the next day.
And Jesus talks to the disciples at that meal in Matthew 26 how he will be betrayed and given
up to the authorities and that he will die on the next day. So while there is no sacrificed lamb
that recalls the blood of the lamb that saved the first-born sons before the escape from slavery
long before, now, Jesus talks to them about how HE will be sacrificed.
And so in the minds of the the followers of Jesus, as they talked about it later, Jesus was now
the “lamb” who was “sacrificed,” not just so that the Jewish firstborn sons could be protected
and the people of Israel set free from slavery in Egypt but now so that ALL PEOPLES IN THE
WHOLE WORLD would be set free from slavery to sin and anything that keeps us enslaved or
oppressed: That we no longer need to sacrifice animals so that we can put ourselves right with
God but that now God has provided his only beloved Son to become the sacrifice that put us
right with God….on the cross…. ….and so Jesus is called the Lamb of God.
So, the LAST SUPPER, the first MASS really is connected to THE PASSOVER, the story of
the Jewish people getting out of slavery in Egypt….
THE EUCHARISTIC MIRACLES in Buenos Aires in 1996
In 1996 Fr. Alejandro Pezet, a priest of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, had finished
distributing Communion and was cleaning up the church after Mass when he discovered a
discarded host in the back of the church. Whether the individual who had received it during
Mass wasn’t Catholic or had left it in the pews for another reason is uncertain, but Fr. Pezet
carefully placed the host in a container full of water to allow it to dissolve. Two days later, as he
was preparing to dispose of what was left of the host, he uncovered the container only to find
that the host appeared to be covered with red blotches of blood.
Confused by what he found, and seeking guidance from the Church, Fr. Pezet reported the
matter to the auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio. If this name sounds familiar,
it’s because you know this man - he now goes by the name “Pope Francis!” Bishop Bergoglio,
after examining the host, ordered that it be observed and photographed. Taken only a few weeks
after the host was first discovered, the photographs showed that the host had grown in size, and
now had the appearance of bloody flesh. After three years of observation, the host had not
shown signs of decomposing, so Bishop Bergoglio asked that it be scientifically analyzed.
In 1999, Dr. Frederick Zugibe, a cardiologist and forensic pathologist, began performing tests
on the miraculous host. What he discovered about the composition of the host is truly stunning:
The analyzed material appeared to be a fragment of heart muscle typically found in the
wall of the left ventricle of the heart, close to the valves.
This type of muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart, and the left ventricle
connects nearly all the organ systems by pumping oxygenated blood to the rest of the
body.
The blood found on the sample was indeed human, and type AB, which also matches the
blood found on the host of Lanciano and from samples extracted from the Shroud of
Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus.
The tissue appeared to be in an inflamed state, and contained a large number of white
blood cells, indicating that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken, since
these white blood cells die outside of a living organism.
Furthermore, the white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, further indicating that the
heart was under severe stress, as if the person themselves had been beaten severely near
the chest area.
In an effort to keep the studies as objective as possible, Dr. Zugibe was not informed about the
origin of the samples he had analyzed. But after completing the studies, he remarked, “You
have to explain one thing to me: If this sample came from a dead person, how could it be that
while I was examining it, the cells of the sample were moving and pulsating? If the heart came
from someone who died in 1996, how could it still be alive?” When he was informed that the
samples had been taken from the miraculous host, he stated, “This will remain an inexplicable
mystery to science—a mystery totally beyond her competence.”
This is a story that maybe can help us to remember how mysterious and powerful the doctrine
of the Eucharist truly is!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
In looking at the Last Supper, one wonders how the disciples reacted to what was being said
and what happened that day in the Upper Room with Jesus.
1. For, first, Jesus talks about the bread and wine becoming his Body and Blood – one
wonders if the disciples thought of that day in John 6 where so many followers of Jesus
“returned to their former way of life” rejecting Jesus after he told them they had to eat his
body and to drink his blood. So much so that Jesus says to the twelve “Will you also
leave?”
2. And second, whether they immediately connected, in their minds, that while Passover
remembered the sacrificed lambs who had saved the lives of the first-born sons of the
Jewish people during the Exodus, that, instead, Jesus was talking about his own sacrifice
that would soon happen during the “Last Supper.” Since the sacrificed lambs at Passover
symbolized how God had saved their first-born sons and helped them to escape slavery
(and animal sacrifices were very commonly practiced back then as a way to reconcile
with God) do you think the first Christians immediately saw the sacrifice of Jesus on the
Cross as replacing the older traditions of animal sacrifices to reconcile with God OR that
the blood of Jesus now was going to SAVE all people from their sins just like the blood
of the lambs saved the first-born sons of the Jewish people during the Exodus from
Egypt?
3. What do you say about a God who would replace an old tradition of sacrificing animals
to find reconciliation with God with giving his only Son to take away our sins and to save
us all from slavery?
of the story of the Jewish people fleeing Egypt and slavery in the Book of Exodus. In that story,
lambs were sacrificed, and their blood put over the lintels of the doors of the Jewish people as
part of their story of gaining freedom from slavery in Egypt. This story is remembered every
year by the Jewish people in the celebration of PASSOVER.
The story is one from the Old Testament and it is LONG LONG ago. About 1200 BC so about
3200 years ago.
And the people of Isreal had come to Egypt a few years before during a famine in Isreal. Egypt
had the Nile River so they always had water to raise grain, they didn’t depend on the rain.
But then the head of Egypt, the Pharoah, made the Isrealites into slaves.
And at times, after enslaving the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Egyptians, according to what we
know, would order the death of all newborn male infants from time to time, in order to control
the growth of the Hebrew slave population. During one of these times tradition has it that
Moses’s parents put him in a reed basket and floated him down the Nile River hoping someone
would take him and raise him.
And he was found and raised, in the end, by an Egyptian woman who, in fact, was in the
Egyptian court, she was an important person in the palace in Egypt, and Moses was raised in an
environment of great weath and comfort like a prince.
At a certain point Moses kills an Egyptian man and flees Egypt. He ends up in a place called
MIDIAN which is now in Saudi Arabia and was about 400 miles from Egypt.
One day Moses is tending the sheep of his father-in-law, for he had married a woman in Midian
and he sees a bush on a mountain nearby and the bush is on-fire but not being consumed by the
fire.
And from the bush God hears a voice. And first God tells Moses to take off his shoes because
he is on holy ground. And God says he is the God of Isreal.
And then God asks Moses to help the people get out of slavery. God says:
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of
their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue
them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and
spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites,
Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites….So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring
my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3: 7-10
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of
Egypt?”
And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent
you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers
has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent
me to you.’”
God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
So Moses goes to Egypt, and there are all these conversations with the King of Egypt, the
Pharoah, where God is trying to get Pharoah to let the Isrealites go free. And in order to do that
the story says that God sends all kinds of terrible things to happen to the Egyptians.
And the last terrible thing is that all the first born sons of the Egyptians died, but that the
Hebrews were warned to put the blood of lambs over their doors in order to protect them their
first born sons. We hear:
(The Lord then told Moses) “Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go forth through
Egypt. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on
his throne to the firstborn of the slave-girl who is at the handmill as well as all the firstborn of
the animals.
Then there will be loud wailing throughout the land of Egypt, such as has never been, nor will
ever be again.
But among all the Israelites, among human beings and animals alike, not even a dog will growl,
so that you may know that the LORD distinguishes between Egypt and Israel.
All these servants of yours will then come down to me and bow down before me, saying: Leave,
you and all your followers! Then I will depart.” With that he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot
anger. Exodus 11: 4-10
And after this last action by God in Egypt the Hebrews finally fled and got out of Egypt. And
this escape from slavery is still remembered by Jewish people every year in the spring in a
celebration called “PASSOVER.”
And at the Passover celebration from the time of Moses till the time of Jesus, the Jewish people
in every family would kill a lamb to remember the blood of the lambs protecting them from
losing their firstborn sons. And they would eat the lamb right before the Passover meal.
And, in addition, in terms of sacrificing animals, the Jewish people did not just sacrifice animals
at Passover time, but, in the time of Jesus, they also had the tradition of sacrificing animals at
the Temple in Jerusalem as an offering to God when someone had sinned and they wanted to
reconcile themselves to God. The animal was sacrificed and the remains were burned, not
eaten. And this “sacrifice” was to put oneself back into rightness of relationship with God.
And this was a VERY common practice. Some scholars say that up to a million animals were
sacrificed at the Temple the week of Passover in ancient days but these sacrifices happened at
the Temple all year long. The Temple was the one place for the Jewish people where the
animals were sacrificed by the priests to put oneself right with God, while at Passover, every
family sacrificed a lamb to remember the blood of the lambs that saved the first-born sons at the
time of the escape from slavery in Egypt.
One can see a reference to the practice of animal sacrifices at the Temple in the New Testament
in Matthew 21:12-13 where Jesus is at the Temple and he confronts “money-changers” and
people selling animals. The money changers were there to assist people in making animal
sacrifices at the Temple. And perhaps Jesus was angry with them because the actual tradition at
the time was that to make in “offering to God” to “put oneself right with God” with an animal
sacrifice was to raise the animal from birth and then to take that animal to them Temple
yourself, after putting in all the effort to raise the animal, and THEN to have the animal
sacrificed and the remains burnt as an offering to God.
But some people would just go to the Temple with some money and, with no real effort, pay
someone to offer the sacrifice of an animal that someone else had raised – and therefore avoid
the investment of their own time and energy.
THIS TRADITION of “sin offerings” or animal sacrifices made in order to reconcile oneself to
God ENDED in 70 AD when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
So anyway, in the time of Jesus, 1300 years after the escape from Egypt and going into Canaan,
that would become Israel, the Jewish people had celebrated Passover every spring with flat
unleavened bread and a sacrificed lamb and they also used other things like wine and bitter
herbs and things like that for the celebration.
And it was at a Passover celebration (Mt 26:17) that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples
when he gave it a twist and made it the “Last Supper” on the (Holy) Thursday before he died on
the cross on Good Friday.
Matthew says:
“On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (that’s Passover), the disciples
approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, “My appointed
time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”
The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered, and prepared the Passover.
And so the meal was prepared and Jesus and the disciples arrived at the Upper Room. And just
like at a Passover meal Jesus had unleavened or flat bread and also wine. The unleavened bread
was and is always a tradition at Passover meals because the Jewish people remembered that
they had been in such a hurry to flee from Egypt and the Egyptian army, that they had not
waited for their bread to rise, but had taken unleavened bread with them.
But Jesus gave this meal a twist. For on the night they celebrated this meal in Matthew 26, on
the night before Jesus was to die on the cross, there is no mention that Jesus had a sacrificed
lamb in the Upper Room.
But instead Jesus is there, the one who would be sacrificed on the cross the next day.
And Jesus talks to the disciples at that meal in Matthew 26 how he will be betrayed and given
up to the authorities and that he will die on the next day. So while there is no sacrificed lamb
that recalls the blood of the lamb that saved the first-born sons before the escape from slavery
long before, now, Jesus talks to them about how HE will be sacrificed.
And so in the minds of the the followers of Jesus, as they talked about it later, Jesus was now
the “lamb” who was “sacrificed,” not just so that the Jewish firstborn sons could be protected
and the people of Israel set free from slavery in Egypt but now so that ALL PEOPLES IN THE
WHOLE WORLD would be set free from slavery to sin and anything that keeps us enslaved or
oppressed: That we no longer need to sacrifice animals so that we can put ourselves right with
God but that now God has provided his only beloved Son to become the sacrifice that put us
right with God….on the cross…. ….and so Jesus is called the Lamb of God.
So, the LAST SUPPER, the first MASS really is connected to THE PASSOVER, the story of
the Jewish people getting out of slavery in Egypt….
THE EUCHARISTIC MIRACLES in Buenos Aires in 1996
In 1996 Fr. Alejandro Pezet, a priest of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, had finished
distributing Communion and was cleaning up the church after Mass when he discovered a
discarded host in the back of the church. Whether the individual who had received it during
Mass wasn’t Catholic or had left it in the pews for another reason is uncertain, but Fr. Pezet
carefully placed the host in a container full of water to allow it to dissolve. Two days later, as he
was preparing to dispose of what was left of the host, he uncovered the container only to find
that the host appeared to be covered with red blotches of blood.
Confused by what he found, and seeking guidance from the Church, Fr. Pezet reported the
matter to the auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio. If this name sounds familiar,
it’s because you know this man - he now goes by the name “Pope Francis!” Bishop Bergoglio,
after examining the host, ordered that it be observed and photographed. Taken only a few weeks
after the host was first discovered, the photographs showed that the host had grown in size, and
now had the appearance of bloody flesh. After three years of observation, the host had not
shown signs of decomposing, so Bishop Bergoglio asked that it be scientifically analyzed.
In 1999, Dr. Frederick Zugibe, a cardiologist and forensic pathologist, began performing tests
on the miraculous host. What he discovered about the composition of the host is truly stunning:
The analyzed material appeared to be a fragment of heart muscle typically found in the
wall of the left ventricle of the heart, close to the valves.
This type of muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart, and the left ventricle
connects nearly all the organ systems by pumping oxygenated blood to the rest of the
body.
The blood found on the sample was indeed human, and type AB, which also matches the
blood found on the host of Lanciano and from samples extracted from the Shroud of
Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus.
The tissue appeared to be in an inflamed state, and contained a large number of white
blood cells, indicating that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken, since
these white blood cells die outside of a living organism.
Furthermore, the white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, further indicating that the
heart was under severe stress, as if the person themselves had been beaten severely near
the chest area.
In an effort to keep the studies as objective as possible, Dr. Zugibe was not informed about the
origin of the samples he had analyzed. But after completing the studies, he remarked, “You
have to explain one thing to me: If this sample came from a dead person, how could it be that
while I was examining it, the cells of the sample were moving and pulsating? If the heart came
from someone who died in 1996, how could it still be alive?” When he was informed that the
samples had been taken from the miraculous host, he stated, “This will remain an inexplicable
mystery to science—a mystery totally beyond her competence.”
This is a story that maybe can help us to remember how mysterious and powerful the doctrine
of the Eucharist truly is!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
In looking at the Last Supper, one wonders how the disciples reacted to what was being said
and what happened that day in the Upper Room with Jesus.
1. For, first, Jesus talks about the bread and wine becoming his Body and Blood – one
wonders if the disciples thought of that day in John 6 where so many followers of Jesus
“returned to their former way of life” rejecting Jesus after he told them they had to eat his
body and to drink his blood. So much so that Jesus says to the twelve “Will you also
leave?”
2. And second, whether they immediately connected, in their minds, that while Passover
remembered the sacrificed lambs who had saved the lives of the first-born sons of the
Jewish people during the Exodus, that, instead, Jesus was talking about his own sacrifice
that would soon happen during the “Last Supper.” Since the sacrificed lambs at Passover
symbolized how God had saved their first-born sons and helped them to escape slavery
(and animal sacrifices were very commonly practiced back then as a way to reconcile
with God) do you think the first Christians immediately saw the sacrifice of Jesus on the
Cross as replacing the older traditions of animal sacrifices to reconcile with God OR that
the blood of Jesus now was going to SAVE all people from their sins just like the blood
of the lambs saved the first-born sons of the Jewish people during the Exodus from
Egypt?
3. What do you say about a God who would replace an old tradition of sacrificing animals
to find reconciliation with God with giving his only Son to take away our sins and to save
us all from slavery?