The readings provide us with a historical evolution of the Paschal Sacrifice, from the bloody sacrifice of the Lamb at the time of the Exodus, the Passover, to the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass as attested by St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. The all important and most essential ingredient of the Passover meal, the lamb, seems to be missing from the Christian ritual. But is it? In place of the Lamb, we have Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Instead of being deficient, the Christian sacrifice of the Mass is wholly sufficient and far superior than the pale shadow of the past.
But the whole point of the lamb to be sacrificed was the shedding of its blood. Blood is valuable not for the pain it caused but for life it gave. In the Old Testament, blood represented life itself, and therefore in ancient Jewish worship, the blood of a sacrificed animal had to be poured as an offering to God, the author of that life, and it was never to be consumed by men. It would be sprinkled on the congregation as how holy water today is sprinkled on us. It was literally a blood bath! According to Leviticus 17:11, there can be no reconciliation without blood. Since blood is a cleansing and enlivening agent, renewing life, it takes away the deadness of sin.
The ceremonial use of blood is also found in the ritual associated with the first Passover. To avert the disaster of the sentence of death which hung over every first born son living in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was shed and then painted across the doors of the Israelites. The lambs served as a substitute for Israel’s first born son, their blood was the price paid so as to spare the blood of these Israelites. This ritual was repeated every year to commemorate this foundational event of the Israelites and during the time of Jesus, the Passover lambs were slaughtered at noon outside the city wall. This foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, the “Lamb of God,” who shed His blood and died for us on a Friday afternoon outside the city wall of Jerusalem.
But in a kind of spiritual jiu-jitsu, Christ poured out His own blood, making a perfect offering to God. Then in true generosity, He transformed blood from a thing offered by man to God into something given as a free gift from God to man. Moreover, it was made accessible in a way proper to human beings: sacramentally present in the Eucharist. No longer gruesome or taboo, it became a means of metaphysical cleansing and entry into divine life. Because Christ shed His blood for us, it is no longer necessary for blood to be shed when offering a sacrifice to God. We offer the bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, because that is how Christ instituted the Eucharist. Today we offer the “sacrifice”, the offering of bread and wine, without shedding blood.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews noted the distinction between the Old and New covenantal sacrifice: “In fact, according to the Law, practically every purification takes place by means of blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission. Only the copies of heavenly things are purified in this way; the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.” Far from being inferior, the sacrifice of Christ which is perpetuated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of a “higher sort.” The Jews shed the blood of lambs which failed to take away their sins despite repeating the ceremony year in year out. But our Lord shed His own blood on the cross, once and for all, rendering the old sacrifice obsolete and inaugurating the supreme sacrifice of the Holy Mass for all times until the end of this age.
The gospel seems to add another odd ritual to the already reworked Passover meal - the washing of feet. At first glance, this second ritual seems disconnected to the first. Though not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels, foot washing could most likely be presumed before the start of the meal, as in every meal, as the disciples marched in from the dusty streets and would at least offer the courtesy to their colleagues to ensure that their feet were relatively clean (and odourless) when positioned near their neighbour’s face (remember that they would have to be in a reclining position, with bodies and feet close to each other). But what was novel about this action and which draws our attention to this seemingly innocuous ritual is the reversal of roles - instead of the servant washing the feet of the master, it is the master who stoops down to wash the feet of his subordinates.
Our first impression of this reversal would be to conclude that Jesus is indeed extremely humble. But is this the only moral lesson which we can assign to His action? If this is so, was Jesus not guilty of partaking in some performative act of virtue signalling - “look at me and see how humble I am”? Yes, humility is certainly an important theme but actually a sub theme to two others. Our Lord’s act of foot-washing is both a symbol of His humble outpouring of love expressed by His sacrificial death on the cross and an example of how His followers should act: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.”
But there is something more to this action which ties it back to the sign of the blood. The significance of this action can be fully understood in the Book of the Apocalypse 7:14. In response to a question by St John the seer, the elder provides this explanation of the multitude arrayed in white robes, holding palms in their hands and worshipping the Lamb: “These are the people who have been through the great trial; they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb.” Here lies one of the greatest paradoxical imageries in scripture, the blood of Christ, the slain but now resurrected Lamb of God, cleanses, leaving the saints spotlessly clean, not covered with the blood and gore of their martyrdom. Blood and spotless-ness can both co-exist in the sacraments of redemption, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the New Passover and the Sacrament of Penance, confession.
The appointed hour has come. We have escaped the whirlwind of our lives to gather, not in the cenacle but in this Church. We are weary. Lord knows that we are weary. Weary of the discipline of Lent, the tumult of life, the empty promises of love and the sting of betrayal of friends. So many are so weary that they cannot bear to look upon the bruised, scarred and bloodied face of our Lord on the cross. It is just too painful. But if we care to look, our Lord wishes to show us how love looks like. It’s not worn as a badge or as a slogan emblazoned on our t-shirts. It’s not sweet platitudes or found in boxes of chocolates or large bouquets of roses. There is nothing warm or fuzzy, nice or sentimental about it. So, what does love look like? It looks like the cross. It looks bloody and gory but now made spotless in the purity of the Holy Eucharist. To love means to follow Christ, and this is what He did: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)
The ceremonial use of blood is also found in the ritual associated with the first Passover. To avert the disaster of the sentence of death which hung over every first born son living in Egypt, the blood of the lamb was shed and then painted across the doors of the Israelites. The lambs served as a substitute for Israel’s first born son, their blood was the price paid so as to spare the blood of these Israelites. This ritual was repeated every year to commemorate this foundational event of the Israelites and during the time of Jesus, the Passover lambs were slaughtered at noon outside the city wall. This foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, the “Lamb of God,” who shed His blood and died for us on a Friday afternoon outside the city wall of Jerusalem.
But in a kind of spiritual jiu-jitsu, Christ poured out His own blood, making a perfect offering to God. Then in true generosity, He transformed blood from a thing offered by man to God into something given as a free gift from God to man. Moreover, it was made accessible in a way proper to human beings: sacramentally present in the Eucharist. No longer gruesome or taboo, it became a means of metaphysical cleansing and entry into divine life. Because Christ shed His blood for us, it is no longer necessary for blood to be shed when offering a sacrifice to God. We offer the bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, because that is how Christ instituted the Eucharist. Today we offer the “sacrifice”, the offering of bread and wine, without shedding blood.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews noted the distinction between the Old and New covenantal sacrifice: “In fact, according to the Law, practically every purification takes place by means of blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission. Only the copies of heavenly things are purified in this way; the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.” Far from being inferior, the sacrifice of Christ which is perpetuated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrifice of a “higher sort.” The Jews shed the blood of lambs which failed to take away their sins despite repeating the ceremony year in year out. But our Lord shed His own blood on the cross, once and for all, rendering the old sacrifice obsolete and inaugurating the supreme sacrifice of the Holy Mass for all times until the end of this age.
The gospel seems to add another odd ritual to the already reworked Passover meal - the washing of feet. At first glance, this second ritual seems disconnected to the first. Though not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels, foot washing could most likely be presumed before the start of the meal, as in every meal, as the disciples marched in from the dusty streets and would at least offer the courtesy to their colleagues to ensure that their feet were relatively clean (and odourless) when positioned near their neighbour’s face (remember that they would have to be in a reclining position, with bodies and feet close to each other). But what was novel about this action and which draws our attention to this seemingly innocuous ritual is the reversal of roles - instead of the servant washing the feet of the master, it is the master who stoops down to wash the feet of his subordinates.
Our first impression of this reversal would be to conclude that Jesus is indeed extremely humble. But is this the only moral lesson which we can assign to His action? If this is so, was Jesus not guilty of partaking in some performative act of virtue signalling - “look at me and see how humble I am”? Yes, humility is certainly an important theme but actually a sub theme to two others. Our Lord’s act of foot-washing is both a symbol of His humble outpouring of love expressed by His sacrificial death on the cross and an example of how His followers should act: “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.”
But there is something more to this action which ties it back to the sign of the blood. The significance of this action can be fully understood in the Book of the Apocalypse 7:14. In response to a question by St John the seer, the elder provides this explanation of the multitude arrayed in white robes, holding palms in their hands and worshipping the Lamb: “These are the people who have been through the great trial; they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb.” Here lies one of the greatest paradoxical imageries in scripture, the blood of Christ, the slain but now resurrected Lamb of God, cleanses, leaving the saints spotlessly clean, not covered with the blood and gore of their martyrdom. Blood and spotless-ness can both co-exist in the sacraments of redemption, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the New Passover and the Sacrament of Penance, confession.
The appointed hour has come. We have escaped the whirlwind of our lives to gather, not in the cenacle but in this Church. We are weary. Lord knows that we are weary. Weary of the discipline of Lent, the tumult of life, the empty promises of love and the sting of betrayal of friends. So many are so weary that they cannot bear to look upon the bruised, scarred and bloodied face of our Lord on the cross. It is just too painful. But if we care to look, our Lord wishes to show us how love looks like. It’s not worn as a badge or as a slogan emblazoned on our t-shirts. It’s not sweet platitudes or found in boxes of chocolates or large bouquets of roses. There is nothing warm or fuzzy, nice or sentimental about it. So, what does love look like? It looks like the cross. It looks bloody and gory but now made spotless in the purity of the Holy Eucharist. To love means to follow Christ, and this is what He did: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)
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