Denver Catholic

31 DENVER CATHOLIC | APRIL 13-26, 2019 than girls. Their sweet, innocent faces reminded me of my nieces. They should have been at home talking to their friends and experimenting with hair styles, not here. I wanted to pro- tect them. I knew they were actors. But I also knew that thousands of their classmates are in that very situ- ation every year. And their innocence is destroyed. Their lives will never be the same. That just about ripped my heart out. I know it's not politically correct these days to talk about Satan. But I believe he exists, I believe he is active in our world, and I believe most of all that he hates innocence. The innocent baby, the innocent child, the innocent young woman who wants to make a di˜ erence. It occurred to me that Christ, in his crucifi xion, was the ulti- mate example of innocence attacked. And that, in his agony in the Garden, part of what he was seeing was all of these devastating attacks on the innocence of His beloved children, through the centuries. I tried, in my truly poor way, to join him there in that raw sadness for lost innocence. And the fi nal thing that struck me, in a sort of "He rises on Easter Sunday" moment, was that it was love that overcame. Love helped Abby see the truth in front of her. Her parents hated what she was doing, but they loved her. Her husband hated what she was doing, but he loved her and married her. (I kept thinking, "That's so unrealistic. A man that staunchly pro-life wouldn't marry the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic." And then I remembered it's actually true.) And, most important, Shawn Carney and his wife, Marilisa, loved her. They stood outside the gates of Planned Parenthood and talked to Abby. They didn't judge her. They didn't join in with the guy who yelled at her and called her names. They spoke the truth, they respected her free will, they took a sincere interest in her life, and they loved her. Not a fake "we are pretending to love you, to get you to change" love. A real, heartfelt love. And so, when she fi nally saw the truth that was in front of her, she knew where to turn — to the people who loved her. I believe that, at the fi nal judg- ment, we will be asked what we did to protect innocent human life. And so, we need to do something. But not just anything. We don't want to be the guy at the fence, screaming and name calling. We need to love. Always. First and foremost. This needs to be God's work, not ours. We need to soak it in prayer. And then, we need to carry his love to a hurting world. T hroughout Lent we've been building up to the celebration of the Paschal Mystery: Jesus' su˜ ering, death, and Resurrection. The word Paschal comes from the Hebrew word for Passover, Pesach. What we call Easter (from an old Ger- manic word for the month of April), most Catholics call Pascha in other Euro- pean languages, the celebration of the Christian Passover. So why is our celebration of Holy Week and Easter considered as the Christian Passover? Dr. Scott Hahn explores this ques- tio n and how it drove his own conver- sion in The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and Cross (Image, 2018). His quest to understand the link between the Cross and the Last Supper began when he heard a sermon from one of his professors around the mystery of the words, "It is fi nished" (John 19:30). Dr. Hahn wondered what Jesus meant by this. As a graduate student and young Presbyterian pastor, he began pouring over scriptural commentaries and, eventually, the Fathers of the Church. His research pointed him very clearly to the Last Supper as the event that explains Jesus' words on the Cross. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus states that he wished to celebrate the Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:116). The Passover commemorates the liber- ation of Israel from Egypt, particu- larly the tenth and fi nal plague of the angel of death, which a¸ icted the fi rst-born sons of the Egyptians. God instructed the Israelites to eat a meal that night in their traveling clothes, with unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and a lamb, whose blood would be spread across the door of the home. The lamb had to be consumed in the course of the meal. The angel of death passed over the houses sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, sparing the Israelite sons. It became a law for the Israelites to celebrate the Passover each year in memory of their salva- tion from the bondage of Egypt. Although Jesus spoke of celebrating the Passover with his disciples, John's Gospel speaks of the day of Jesus' death as the Passover. Jesus dies at the same time the lambs were slaugh- tered in the Temple for the Passover meal. John presents Jesus himself as the Passover lamb, stressing that not a bone in his body was broken, a requirement for the Passover lamb. It is in John's account that we see the passage in question: "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now fi nished, said (to fulfi ll the scripture), 'I thirst.'¦A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth.¦When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, 'It is fi nished'; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" (John 19:28-30). The drinking of the vinegar imme- diately before Jesus said, "It is fi n- ished," unlocks the meaning of the words. Many scholars have analyzed the Last Supper and the ways in which it overlaps with and is distinct from the Passover meal. The descriptions, for instance, make no mention of the lamb, though John's Gospel seems to explain that Jesus himself serves this role. The disciples eat the Passover lamb by consuming the unleavened bread, which Jesus transforms into his own body, the fl esh of the new Passover lamb. Another distinction is that the meal cuts o˜ before the drinking of the last of the four cups of wine have been consumed. This makes it seem that the Passover that Jesus celebrates does not truly end. And it doesn't, until the Cross. Dr. Hahn asserts that Jesus's words, "It is fi nished," refer to the conclusion of the Passover meal. The vinegar serves as the fourth cup, which completes the sacrifi ce of Jesus as the Passover lamb and inaugurates the Kingdom of God. In the Last Supper, Jesus o˜ ers his Body and Blood for our salvation, which he fulfi lls on the Cross. It is the sacrifi ce of his life as the Lamb of God, which inaugurates a new Passover, o˜ ered to all people for their salvation from sin. What led to Dr. Hahn's conversion was the connection of what he discov- ered about the link between the Last Supper and the Cross to the Mass. Unlike the accusations he had heard from Protestants, Catholics did not claim that the Mass was a new sac- rifi ce of Jesus, but the making of his one, eternal sacrifi ce present through it. He realized that the Mass was the New Passover meal and served as a renewal of the covenant, like the Passover served for the Israelites. Although Catholics can experience the fruits of the new Passover at every Mass, Holy Week and Easter give us the most important moment each year to accept the fruits of Jesus' sac- rifi ce. They call us to renew our faith and baptismal promises so that we can follow Paul's exhortation: "Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacri- fi ced.¦Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival" (1 Cor 5:7). The Catholic Reader R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is a husband and father of six, the director of formation for the Archdiocese of Denver, a Benedictine oblate, prolifi c writer, and insatiable reader. DR. R. JARED STAUDT How the Last Supper unlocks the Paschal Mystery

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