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And so they wait and eat, this people of Israel. They stand and share a meal in family groups, and can only dream about the possibilities ahead of them. Soon they will be free. And so they stand to eat. This meal, when death passes over and beyond them. They are safe - for now. And when they have eaten the last of the food, and when the time is right, under cover of darkness they slip into the night.
This Passover Meal is so important to the Israelites that it becomes embedded in their history, in the story of who they are. It defines them and delivers them. In years and centuries to come they will stop every year to remember and recall the time they were led to freedom.
Jesus gathers with his apostles to share the Passover meal. It is important to them, of course, as it was important to every Jewish man and woman and child. They need to get it right and so preparations begin. They find a place, an upstairs room. They are retelling and remembering, they are celebrating. There is nervous tension in the air, there is excitement. There is an element of danger and uncertainty. Jesus talks to them as they eat, their minds are whirring with thoughts and images of the past, their stomachs are turning over, they are gathered in the half-light, in silence and song.
As Jews, the Passover meal is so full of meaning, so tender, so beautiful, so important, so embedded in their minds and lives but Jesus now, on this night, fills it with even more meaning. Jesus gives the bread and wine with words that cannot be fully understood, not then, not there.
Perhaps it's only later that they realise the full extent of all that Jesus did and said. And they remember the words: to do this in remembrance of Jesus, to recall the moment when he gives himself to them in bread and wine, when he gives himself into the hands of those who would hurt and harm, when he gives his life for us on the cross.
The Eucharistic meal is a Passover, when death is embraced, when we celebrate our freedom in the self-giving, self sacrificing love of Christ.
'Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes in glory,' says St Paul.
Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we are filled, and can be filled, with so many emotions. It depends on where we are in life at that particular moment. We may have gone to Mass after arguing with a member of the family. We may be carrying worries and anxieties. We may be bored with life or excited by life. We may be down or up, or upward looking.
The Eucharist is meal of liberation: it is a meal that liberates us from sin and death, from captivity to so many things that hold us back or hold us down, a liberation from fear. Why? Because in the Eucharist we receive Jesus, and recall those saving moments that have defined us and changed, those saving acts that have freed us and enabled us to live for God.
'This is our Passover Feast, when Christ the true lamb was slain,' sings the priest at the Easter Vigil. Every celebration of the Eucharist is a meal of liberation. It is our Passover, when we celebrate the Mystery of Easter, the mystery of Christ's death resurrection, led by God to a land flowing with milk and honey
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