The Holy Week Retreat - The Jewish Passover - Station 4

Experience the ultimate Holy Week Retreat!

Join Fr. Jonathan Meyer (and Catholics across America!) on an epic journey through the Stations of the Eucharist. This incredible retreat will guide you through fourteen stations from Genesis to Revelation that will reshape the way you see the rest of your life. Get ready to break open the Scriptures, immerse yourself in the story of salvation history, and consider the sacrifice of Jesus Christ like never before. 

This year’s Holy Week Retreat is simple to follow. Each day, you’ll receive two reflections that will help you meditate on two of the fourteen stations. You can watch them both together, or space them out as morning and evening reflections. We’ll cover all fourteen stations by Holy Saturday so you can have the best Easter of your life!

Get free email reminders for this Holy Week Retreat: https://www.dynamiccatholic.com/holy-week-retreat.html

Get a copy of The Stations of the Eucharist here: https://www.dynamiccatholic.com/the-stations-of-the-eucharist/STEU.html

Become a Dynamic Catholic Ambassador and select your welcome gifts today: https://www.dynamiccatholic.com/give/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The fourth station of the Eucharist, the Jewish Passover. O sacrament is holy, O sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine. All of us are abundantly aware of Exodus chapter twelve. As a young child being raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, I remember yearly gathered with my family to watch the epic Ten Commandments. Yule Brenner, Charleston Heston, Water Parting, Blood in the Nile. It's powerful. I hope you've seen that movie. The images are deep within me. Whether they knew it or not, my parents were saying this is important. You need to know this story. The story of the Passover is important. And it truly is. Because it was on that night that the Israelites were saved. And every single year, the Jewish people celebrate the Passover every year. And they believe that what they do at the table, when they celebrate their Seder meal, their Passover meal, that they are participating in the freedom and the liberation that happened that night when the Jewish people were set free. And what set them free? What was it? Because let's be honest, Moses had done a lot of things trying to set them free. Animals received boils, there were flies, there were frogs, water turned into blood. There were a lot of things, but only one thing actually set them free from slavery and set them on course to the promised land. And what was that one thing? It was the death of a lamb. And not just the death of the lamb, but then their eating of the lamb and the blood which had been separated from the lamb being put on their doorposts and their lintels. Clearly, that's why Jesus chose to have the Seder meal, to have the Passover meal be the context for our salvation, and why he chose the night before he died in the upper room to give us the everlasting memorial, which allows us to participate daily in the great gift and mystery of our salvation, which is the Lamb of God being slain, dying, and rising again. If you were a family in Goshen in the land of the slaves in Egypt at the time of the Passover, and someone in your family said, You wanna know what? I really don't like lamb. I prefer beef. I prefer chicken. If there was a wife who just said, Honey, I just painted the doorposts. Please don't put blood on them. They look beautiful. What would have happened? Their firstborn son would have died. Moses made it very clear that everyone had to eat the lamb and blood had to be put on their doorposts. And if they didn't, their firstborn sons would die. Not just their sons, but also all of their animals. This is true for the Israelites, but it was also true for all the Egyptians. And they did die. There was wailing that night for those who were disobedient to the plan that God had given to Moses. So imagine how much more weight is there when our Lord Jesus Christ, his very self, appears in the flesh. And during his public ministry, which was just only three years, he stood at the synagogue in Capernaum and said, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Obedience to God's ways, obedience to God's laws, obedience to what Christ invites us to, it matters. It mattered then and it matters now. And just as the Israelites had to eat the flesh of the Son of, had to eat the flesh of the Lamb and have the blood on their doorposts, one of the great bishops, the great doctors, the great fathers of our church, St. John Chrysostom, has this powerful quote. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors, he did not dare to enter. So how much less will the devil approach now when he sees not the figurative blood on doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ. You see, you're a temple of God. You're a sanctuary of God. The day of your baptism, you were made a temple of God, a sanctuary of God, a dwelling place of God. And thus the blood of Christ is to be on our lips, and his flesh within our very bodies. This powerful, powerful story of the Exodus, chapter 12, it's still alive today at every single Mass. When Jesus, the Lamb of God, gives us his flesh and his blood to save us. And we're called to be obedient to that. He said, Do this in memory of me. Do this in memory of me. What is it in your life that you struggle with when it comes to being obedient to God's ways and God's laws? I remember hearing a talk one time, and the presenter said, wherever you struggle being obedient, there is a lack of love. And wherever you are obedient, love exists. He made the reference, he said, the majority of people don't need the commandment, thou shall not kill their spouse. They only need it every now and then. Why do we not need the commandment, thou shalt not kill your spouse? Well, because we love our spouse. Where there is love, there is obedience. And yet, in those situations in our life where we struggle, there's a lack of love. I want to encourage you to spend some time just to say, where are there struggles in my life of being obedience and what laws are they? Go through the Ten Commandments, go through the seven deadly sins. Where do I struggle in my life with obedience? And I just want you to pray today for an outpouring of love. Dear God, saturate me, pour down, shower me with love and with grace, because you are the only one who can save me. I need more of your love, more of your grace in this area in my life, so I can live as your son and your daughter. The Israelites, they were obedient. They sacrificed lambs and they put it on their doorposts, and they were saved and they were set free. Jesus wants to do the same for you and for me. Yes, in the Mass, by giving us his body and his blood to eat and to save us, but also by encouraging us to be obedient and faithful to his ways. Let's pray for that grace. Let's pray that this station, so deeply rooted in who we are, may guide us and lead us to eternal life. Amen.