Dear Brothers and Sisters,
"Christ, our Paschal lamb, has been sacrificed!" (1 Cor 5:7). On
this day, Saint Paul’s triumphant words ring forth, words that
we have just heard in the second reading, taken from his First
Letter to the Corinthians. It is a text which originated barely
twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and yet
– like many Pauline passages – it already contains, in an
impressive synthesis, a full awareness of the newness of life in
Christ. The central symbol of salvation history – the Paschal
lamb – is here identified with Jesus, who is called "our Paschal
lamb". The Hebrew Passover, commemorating the liberation from
slavery in Egypt, provided for the ritual sacrifice of a lamb
every year, one for each family, as prescribed by the Mosaic
Law. In his passion and death, Jesus reveals himself as the Lamb
of God, "sacrificed" on the Cross, to take away the sins of the
world. He was killed at the very hour when it was customary to
sacrifice the lambs in the Temple of Jerusalem. The meaning of
his sacrifice he himself had anticipated during the Last Supper,
substituting himself – under the signs of bread and wine – for
the ritual food of the Hebrew Passover meal. Thus we can truly
say that Jesus brought to fulfilment the tradition of the
ancient Passover, and transformed it into his Passover.
On the basis of this new meaning of the Paschal feast, we can
also understand Saint Paul’s interpretation of the "leaven". The
Apostle is referring to an ancient Hebrew usage: according to
which, on the occasion of the Passover, it was necessary to
remove from the household every tiny scrap of leavened bread. On
the one hand, this served to recall what had happened to their
forefathers at the time of the flight from Egypt: leaving the
country in haste, they had brought with them only unleavened
bread. At the same time, though, the "unleavened bread" was a
symbol of purification: removing the old to make space for the
new. Now, Saint Paul explains, this ancient tradition likewise
acquires a new meaning, once more derived from the new "Exodus",
which is Jesus’ passage from death to eternal life. And since
Christ, as the true Lamb, sacrificed himself for us, we too, his
disciples – thanks to him and through him – can and must be the
"new dough", the "unleavened bread", liberated from every
residual element of the old yeast of sin: no more evil and
wickedness in our heart.
"Let us celebrate the feast … with the unleavened bread of
sincerity and truth". This exhortation from Saint Paul, which
concludes the short reading that was proclaimed a few moments
ago, resounds even more powerfully in the context of the Pauline
Year. Dear brothers and sisters, let us accept the Apostle’s
invitation; let us open our spirit to Christ, who has died and
is risen in order to renew us, in order to remove from our
hearts the poison of sin and death, and to pour in the
life-blood of the Holy Spirit: divine and eternal life. In the
Easter Sequence, in what seems almost like a response to the
Apostle’s words, we sang: "Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis
vere" – we know that Christ has truly risen from the dead. Yes,
indeed! This is the fundamental core of our profession of faith;
this is the cry of victory that unites us all today. And if
Jesus is risen, and is therefore alive, who will ever be able to
separate us from him? Who will ever be able to deprive us of the
love of him who has conquered hatred and overcome death?
The Easter proclamation spreads throughout the world with the
joyful song of the Alleluia. Let us sing it with our lips, and
let us sing it above all with our hearts and our lives, with a
manner of life that is "unleavened", that is to say, simple,
humble, and fruitful in good works. "Surrexit Christus spes mea:
precedet suos in Galileam" – Christ my hope is risen, and he
goes before you into Galilee. The Risen One goes before us and
he accompanies us along the paths of the world. He is our hope,
He is the true peace of the world. Amen!
© Copyright 2009 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Look
at the One they Pierced!
