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From: Exodus 11:10-12:14

[10] Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord har-
dened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

The Institution of the Passover

[1] The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, [2] “This month
shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year
for you. [3] Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month
they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for
a household; [4] and if the household is too small for a lamb, then a man and his
neighbor next to his house shall take according to the number of persons; accor-
ding to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. [5] Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or
from the goats; [6] and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month,
when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the
evening. [7] Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two door-
posts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. [8] They shall eat the
flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.
[9] Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with water, but roasted, its head with its legs
and its inner parts. [10] And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; any-
thing that remains until the morning you shall burn.

[11] In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet,
and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s passover.
[12] For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all, the gods of Egypt
I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. [13] The blood shall be a sign for you,
upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you,
and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

[14] “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast
to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for
ever.”

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Commentary:

12:1-14. This discourse of the Lord contains a number of rules for celebrating the
Passover and the events commemorated in it; it is a kind of catechetical-liturgical
text which admirably summarizes the profound meaning of that feast.

The Passover probably originated as a shepherds’ feast held in springtime, when
lambs are born and the migration to summer pastures was beginning; a new-born
lamb was sacrificed and its blood used to perform a special rite in petition for the
protection and fertility of the flocks. But once this feast became connected with
the history of the Exodus it acquired a much deeper meaning, as did the rites
attaching to it.

Thus, the “congregation” (v. 3) comprises all the Israelites organized as a reli-
gious community to commemorate the most important event in their history,
deliverance from bondage.

The victim will be a lamb, without blemish (v. 5) because it is to be offered to
God. Smearing the doorposts and lintel with the blood of the victim (vv. 7. 13),
an essential part of the rite, signifies protection from dangers. The Passover is
ssentially sacrificial from the very start.

The meal (v. 11) is also a necessary part, and the manner in which it is held is a
very appropriate way of showing the urgency imposed by circumstances: there is
no time to season it (v. 9); no other food is eaten with it, except for the bread and
desert herbs (a sign of indigence); the dress and posture of those taking part
(standing, wearing sandals and holding a staff) show that they are on a journey.
In the later liturgical commemoration of the Passover, these things indicate that
the Lord is passing among his people.

The rules laid down for the Passover are evocative of very ancient nomadic desert
rites, where there was no priest or temple or altar. When the Israelites had settled
in Palestine, the Passover continued to be celebrated at home, always retaining
the features of a sacrifice, a family meal and, very especially, a memorial of the
deliverance the Lord brought about on that night.

Our Lord chose the context of the Passover Supper to institute the Eucharist: “By
celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal,
Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus’ passing over to his
Father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the Sup-
per and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and antici-
pates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom” (”Catechism
of the Catholic Church”, 1340).

12:2. This event is so important that it is going to mark the starting point in the re-
ckoning of time. In the history of Israel there are two types of calendar, both based
on the moon—one which begins the year in the autumn, after the feast of Weeks
(cf. 23:16; 34:22), and the other beginning it in spring, between March and April.
This second calendar probably held sway for quite a long time, for we know that
the first month, known as Abib (spring)—cf. 13:4; 23:18; 34:18—was called, in the
post-exilic period (from the 6th century BC onwards) by the Babylonian name of
Nisan (Neh 2:1; Esther 3:7). Be that as it may, the fact that this month is called
the first month is a way of highlighting the importance of the event which is going
to be commemorated (the Passover).

12:11. Even now it is difficult to work out the etymology of the word “Passover”.
In other Semitic languages it means “joy” or “festive joy” or also “ritual and fes-
tive leap”. In the Bible the same root means “dancing or limping” in an idolatrous
rite (cf. 1 Kings 18:21, 26) and “protecting” (cf. Is 31:5), so it could mean “punish-
ment, lash” and also “salvation, protection”. In the present text the writer is provi-
ding a popular, non-scholarly etymology, and it is taken as meaning that “the
Lord passes through”, slaying Egyptians and sparing the Israelites.

In the New Testament it will be applied to Christ’s passage to the Father by
death and resurrection, and the Church’s “passage” to the eternal Kingdom: “The
Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when
she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection” (”Catechism of the Catholic
Church”, 677).

12:14. The formal tone of these words gives an idea of the importance the Pass-
over always had. If the historical books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) hard-
ly mention it, the reason is that they allude only to sacrifices in the temple and
the Passover was always celebrated in people’s homes. When the temple ceased
to be (6th century BC), the feast acquired more prominence, as can be seen from
the post-exilic biblical texts (cf Ezra 6:19-22; 2 Chron 30:1-27; 35:1-19) and extra-
biblical texts such as the famous “Passover papyrus Elephantine” (Egypt) of the
5th century BC. In Jesus’ time a solemn passover sacrifice was celebrated in the
temple the passover meal was held at home.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

From: Matthew 12:1-8

The Question of the Sabbath

[1] At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; His disciples
were hungry, and they began to pluck ears of grain and to eat. [2] But when the
Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not
lawful to do on the Sabbath.” [3] He said to them, “Have you not read what David
did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: [4] how he entered the
house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him
to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? [5] Or have you
not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sab-
bath, and are guiltless? [6] I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.
[7] And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’
you would not have condemned the guiltless. [8] For the Son of Man is Lord of
the Sabbath.”

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Commentary:

2. “The Sabbath”: this was the day the Jews set aside for worshipping God.
God Himself, the originator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3), ordered the Jewish
people to avoid certain kinds of work on this day (Exodus 20:8-11; 21:13; Deu-
teronomy 5:14) to leave them free to give more time to God. As time went by,
the rabbis complicated this divine precept: by Jesus’ time they had extended
to 39 the list of kinds of forbidden work.

The Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath. In the casuistry
of the scribes and the Pharisees, plucking ears of corn was the same as harves-
ting, and crushing them was the same as milling—types of agricultural work for-
bidden on the Sabbath.

3-8. Jesus rebuts the Pharisees’ accusation by four arguments—the example of
David, that of the priests, a correct understanding of the mercy of God and Jesus’
own authority over the Sabbath.

The first example which was quite familiar to the people, who were used to liste-
ning to the Bible being read, comes from 1 Samuel 21:2-7: David, in flight from
the jealousy of King Saul, asks the priest of the shrine of Nob for food for his men;
the priest gave them the only bread he had, the holy bread of the Presence; this
was the twelve loaves which were placed each week on the golden altar of the
sanctuary as a perpetual offering from the twelve tribes of Israel (Leviticus 24:5-9).
The second example refers to the priestly ministry to perform the liturgy, priests
had to do a number of things on the Sabbath but did not thereby break the law of
Sabbath rest (cf. Numbers 28:9). On the other two arguments, see the notes on
Matthew 9:13 and Mark
2:26-27, 28.

[The notes on Matthew 9:13 states:

13. Here Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6, keeping the hyperbole of the Semitic style.
A more faithful translation would be: “I desire mercy more than sacrifice”. It is
not hat our Lord does not want the sacrifices we offer Him: He is stressing that
every sacrifice should come from the eart, for charity should imbue everything a
Christian does—especially his worship of God (see 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Mat-
thew 5:23-24).]

[The notes on Mark 2:26-27, 28 states:

26-27. The bread of the Presence consisted of twelve loaves or cakes placed
each morning on the table in the sanctuary, as homage to the Lord from the
twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Leviticus 24:5-9). The loaves withdrawn to make room
for the fresh ones were reserved to the priests. Abiathar’s action anticipates what
Christ teaches here. Already in the Old Testament God had established a hierar-
chy in the precepts of the Law so that the lesser ones yielded to the main ones.

This explains why a ceremonial precept (such as the one we are discussing)
should yield before a precept of the natural law. Similarly, the commandment
to keep the Sabbath does not come before the duty to seek basic subsistence.
Vatican II uses this passage of the Gospel to underline the value of the human
person over and above economic and social development: “The social order and
its development must constantly yield to the good of the person, since the order
of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way a-
round, as the Lord suggested when He said that the Sabbath was made for man
and not man for the Sabbath. The social order requires constant improvement:
it must be founded in truth, built on justice, and enlivened by love” (”Gaudium Et
Spes”, 26).

Finally in this passage Christ teaches God’s purpose in instituting the Sabbath:
God established it for man’s good, to help him rest and devote himself to Divine
worship in joy and peace. The Pharisees, through their interpretation of the Law,
had turned this day into a source of anguish and scruple due to all the various
prescriptions and prohibitions they introduced.

By proclaiming Himself ‘Lord of the Sabbath’, Jesus affirms His divinity and His
universal authority. Because He is Lord he has the power to establish other
laws, as Yahweh had in the Old Testament.

28. The Sabbath had been established not only for man’s rest but also to give
glory to God: that is the correct meaning of the _expression “the Sabbath was
made for man.” Jesus has every right to say He is Lord of the Sabbath, because
He is God. Christ restores to the weekly day of rest its full, religious meaning: it
is not just a matter of fulfilling a number of legal precepts or of concern for physi-
cal well-being: the Sabbath belongs to God; it is one way, suited to human nature,
of rendering glory and honor to the Almighty. The Church, from the time of the
Apostles onwards, transferred the observance of this precept to the following day,
Sunday—the Lord’s Day—in celebration of the resurrection of Christ.

“Son of Man”: the origin of the messianic meaning of this _expression is to be
found particularly in the prophecy of Dan 7:13ff, where Daniel, in a prophetic vision,
contemplates ‘one like the Son of Man’ coming down on the clouds of Heaven,
who even goes right up to God’s throne and is given dominion and glory and royal
power over all peoples and nations. This _expression appears 69 times in the
Synoptic Gospels; Jesus prefers it to other ways of describing the Messiah—such
as Son of David, Messiah, etc.—thereby avoiding the nationalistic overtones those
expressions had in Jewish minds at the time (cf. “Introduction to the Gospel Ac-
cording to St. Mark”, p. 62 above.]

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.