Today’s Word:
O God, You have taught me from my youth, and til the present, to proclaim your wondrous deeds. (Psalm 71:17)
Today is the first day of the eight-day Jewish Feast of Passover. The Passover commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, circa 1230 BC.
The angel of death passed over the homes of the Jewish people in Egypt because they had placed the blood of the slaughtered lamb on their doorposts and lintels.
According to the Wilmington News Journal, “The Exodus story …is central to Jewish identity.”
It is also central to Christian identity.
According to today’s Gospel, Jesus was “reclining at table with His disciples” to share the annual Passover Supper (John 13:12). During the Supper, He handed the disciples bread and wine. Jesus’s act of sharing bread and wine with His disciples is an event Christians will celebrate this Thursday, Holy Thursday. It is an act remembered each Mass in the Eucharistic prayer – the Canon of the Mass.
Both Jews and Christians can pray the words of today’s Responsorial Psalm, “O God, You have taught me from my youth, and til the present, to proclaim your wondrous deeds.”
– Father McLaughlin