![]() You proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes (1 Cor 11:23-26). “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.ĭo this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”įor as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, Took bread, and, after he had given thanks,īroke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, He presented his own life as the greatest, most utterly novel intervention of God into Israel’s history. How else can one put it? Jesus gave thanks to the God of Israel for himself. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians, we find the astonishing assertion that Christ-quite blasphemously if he were not the Son of God-transformed this sacred act of Jewish thanksgiving. Instead, from the earliest record, that of St. It would have rallied others to Christ’s cause, both then and in the centuries to come.Īs the one presiding over the seder, Jesus should have given thanks for the covenant, the law, the land and the kingship of David. Claiming that Christ passed his last night on earth as a pious Jew would have set the stage for the proclamation of his martyrdom. What we should expect to hear, in a story that has been dressed up, is that Jesus piously and perfectly celebrated his last Passover with his disciples. Then what we should expect from those who wanted to continue his crusade, even without its leader, would be the claim that Christ was a great martyr.Īre the Gospels self-serving accounts? Paradoxically, awareness of the human predilection to tamper with the truth assails, rather than supports, that presumption.ĭo not let the record that we have obscure the one that should have been expected because if you do, you miss the singularity of that extraordinary seder meal, which is so intricately linked with the claim that Christ rose from the dead. According to the Gospels, Jesus astounded his own disciples by his resurrection from the dead. Indeed, many of our contemporaries base their abandonment of or lackluster adherence to Christianity on the belief that its great historical claims can now be explained away.Īre the Gospels self-serving accounts? Paradoxically, awareness of the human predilection to tamper with the truth assails, rather than supports, that presumption. Evidently, better to present the departed pontiff as holy than as hardworking.Įven in the face of death, we toy with truth to serve our ends. And instead of the papers from the office, which were found at his bedside, they substituted the Christian spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ. ![]() ![]() Even the Vatican was a bit bewildered, not admitting that the deceased pontiff had been discovered by a religious sister who worked in the household. The world was stunned by his sudden death on Sept. Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15Īt only 33 days, the pontificate of Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, was one of the shortest in history. ![]()
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