Anyone who attends Mass knows that the Eucharist was instituted by Jesus “on the night he was betrayed,” just before the Crucifixion. However, its roots go deeper in history. The foundational event of Israel’s national life was the Exodus, when God took his people out of Egypt. At that time, God instituted the Passover meal, in which the Israelites sacrificed a lamb, painted their doorposts with its blood and consumed its flesh in a sacred meal (Exodus 12). The blood on the doorposts caused God’s wrath to pass over the Israelites, and the flesh of the lamb strengthened them for their journey to the Promised Land. On the way, God made a covenant with the Israelites. This covenant was instituted with sacrifices, and to signify the union of God and his people, Moses applied part of the blood to the altar and part to the people, describing it as “the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you” (Exodus 24:8). But the Israelites were unfaithful, and God sent the prophet Jeremiah to announce a new and better covenant: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke” (Jeremiah 31:31-32)
Understanding the Holy Eucharist, Our ‘Source and Summit’| National Catholic Register
Understanding the Holy Eucharist, Our ‘Source and Summit’| National Catholic Register
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