While they were eating the Passover meal, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples. He said, "Take this and eat. It is my body."
Then he took a cup of wine, gave thanks, and handed it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant. It will be poured out for many."Mark 14: 22-24
Jesus surely took part in the observance of Passover as a child. And in keeping with tradition, during the meal he would have asked his father Joseph to explain the meaning of Passover. Joseph would repeat the story from the Torah of how the Lord instructed his people to mark their doorposts with the blood of the Passover lamb, so that seeing the blood of the lamb the Lord would pass over their houses, and not destroy his own people when he struck down their oppressors. And Joseph would go on to explain how the Passover meal was to be eaten in haste, with sandals on the feet and a staff in hand, as though preparing for a journey, because it is a commemoration of the flight from oppression and the beginning of the journey to the promised land.
As Jesus the man grew in his understanding of his oneness with God, he came to realize that what was commemorated in Passover was not the fullness of God's revelation to his people. Instead he found the fullness of God in himself, and so he set out on his ministry to proclaim a new covenant between God and man. He proclaimed that the covenant is for everyone, that we are all people of God, that in Jesus himself God comes among us, not to save a few and strike down the rest, but to offer eternal life to everyone.
With the new covenant Jesus also instituted a new ritual to commemorate it. On the night before he died, at the very meal that commemorated the old covenant, Jesus broke bread with his followers, and made the bread the sacrament of his own body. For the new covenant would not be sealed with the sacrifice of a burnt offering; Jesus himself would be the lamb of sacrifice by which we are saved. And Jesus shared a cup of wine with his followers, and made it the sacrament of his own blood. No longer would the blood of the Passover lamb mark the doorposts of those to be saved; now the blood of Jesus himself would mark all mankind for salvation.
Just as the people of Israel passed from one generation to the next the meaning of Passover, so too Christians throughout the ages have preserved the meaning of the Lord's Supper. And just as Jesus felt the tension between the old Passover commemorating the salvation of a few and the new reality of salvation for all, so too the Church struggles with the tension of old and new. Often the Lord's Supper is for Christians a sign of division rather than unity, of exclusivity rather than openness, of the privilege of the elect rather than an invitation to all.
When we gather at the Lord's table and our children ask us the meaning of it, may we tell them that it is a commemoration of the new covenant. At the Lord's table we receive food for the journey to heaven. Like the old Passover it is eaten in haste, with sandals on the feet and staff in hand. It is bread not for a privileged few, but for everyone, so that on the strength of this food no one is left behind on the journey to God.
Lord Jesus Christ, we worship you living among us in the sacrament of your body and blood. May we offer to our Father in heaven a solemn pledge of undivided love. And may we offer to our brothers and sisters a life poured out in loving service of that kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.- from the mass for the feast of Corpus Christi