The Beauty of God's Word: Passover, Eucharist, and Typology

Today is Holy Thursday, when Jesus took the Passover meal and transformed it into the Eucharist at the last supper. God gives the Israelites in Exodus 12 the following commands:

1) Procure lambs, male without blemish, in their prime.
2) Smear its blood on the doorposts and lintels of each Israelite house so that the angel of death will “pass over” those houses to strike the firstborn males of the Egyptian houses.
3) Eat the lamb with unleavened bread, for strength after being freed from the Pharoah and slavery to the Egyptians.
4) Continue this ritual for nourishment on route to the promised land.
5) Only the circumcised may take part in this.

Twelve hundred years later, Jesus, the ‘new Moses’, fulfills the Passover, providing the fullness of its meaning. He was to pass-over from this life to the next to conquer death and save His people. Moses saved his people from slavery; Jesus saves His people from slavery to sin. In relation to God’s five commands in Exodus (above), the New Covenant informs us:

1) Authorities procured the Lamb of God, Jesus, a male in His prime with no blemish of sin.
2) He saves all those whose ‘doorway to their souls’ is marked by His blood, consumed in the Eucharist.
3) We must eat the new Lamb - in the form of unleavened bread - for strength for the journey after being freed from the devil and slavery to sin.
4) Continue to do this “in remembrance of me” for spiritual nourishment on route to the new promised land, Heaven.
5) Only the baptized may partake.

THIS is biblical typology.

Passover is the prefigurement of the Eucharist; and as seen in no. 3 above, consuming the (new) Lamb is necessary to fulfill the Scriptures and God’s will.

“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:54-56).