SPECIAL FEATURE: PESSAH AND EASTER
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PESSAH IN THE JEWISH TRADITION
�Joyous meal�, the communion of love in sharing the same meal after the Divine Liturgy. If someone could compare such a meal from afar with the �seudah�, �siide� in Yiddish related to the products, especially the meat shared and given by the tzadik or spiritual guider of a hassidic community after he has delivered his spiritual message.
THE LAST SUPPER
Therefore it is important to make a strong connection between the Seder HaPessah, the meal of Passover and the Divine Liturgy or Eucharist which is the kernel purpose of assembly of all the believers, especially after the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord. Everybody may come and enter the palace and take part in this meal as recounts the exhortation of Saint John Chrysostom.
The question is still pending whether to know at what exact time Jesus celebrate this Last Supper. It is mentioned in the Three first Gospels but omitted in the Gospel of Saint John, in which the Washing of the Feet is pointed out.
Jesus repeats in the three Gospels that he deeply desired to eat this meal of Passover with His disciples. And it is said that �after the song of the Hallel� [Matthew 26:30, Mark 14:26] that should presuppose that the offering was indeed the Seder of the Passover.
Some theologians have assumed that Jesus has celebrated a sort of Kiddush, a blessing over the cup and the bread which is regularly performed every Shabbat or Friday at sunset. It would then be more convenient to explain the use of leavened bread since the two loaves offered for the Kiddush [act of Sanctification] correspond to the �shtey lekhem� the two loaves of bread offered at the time of Pentecost. The blessing over the wine or �peri HaGefen� is very ancient and also recited by the Householder or �baal habayit� each Friday evening or at various circumstances.
This very important tradition is stated in the Talmud Tractate Berakhot [Blessings] 5:1. It is mentioned that Jesus �gave thanks, blessed, sanctified, brake and said His Disciples and Apostles�. In the first part, Jesus acts as any normal adult Jew called to pronounce the blessings over the bread and the cup during a Kiddush. Even when He breaks the bread, He achieves the ancient Tradition.
But the Gospel continues and words bring us further : �Take, [eat], This is My Body�� and �Drink you all of it, This is My Blood��. These words introduce to another reality that reveals and achieves the Jewish and Talmudic Tradition. This requires some explanations. When a Jew prononunces the words over the bread and the cup of wine, he gives thanks to God for His Creation that He has created according to His Will and Project. The entire Creation is holy and sanctified. It belongs to God Who accepted to hand it over to the humankind. Therefore, the Kiddush allows to share something that first is holy, sanctified and belongs to God by right. It makes it an ailment that can be eaten or drunk by ordinary people. It allows to perceive what is holy and saint and to share it with human beings.
In the course of the Divine Liturgy or Eucharist [Thanksgiving], the priest, acting in the name of Jesus Christ [�In Persona Christi : in the Person of Jesus Christ as the Latin Catholics would say], is the transmittor and consecrator of an action that leads us far beyond the brakhah or Jewish blessing : The bread and the wine become indeed the Body and the Blood of Our Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, an ailment of protection into the World to Come.
The Oriental Tradition is very clear about that since after the memorial of the words said by Jesus during the Last Supper, the priest invokes the Holy Spirit, as it was at the time of the first Pentecost in order to change these gifts into the True Body and the True Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We enter into the depth of the Easter Meal, the Last Supper usually commemorated on Maundy Thursday. This recalls the divine origin od incarnation : �He Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant, and He was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death and the death of the cross. Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and this under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.� [Philippians 2:6-11].
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