Holy Thursday.

The Jewish Passover was and is a family holiday. It was not celebrated
in the temple but around the house. Already in the description of the departure, the house stands out as a place of salvation, of shelter in that night through which the Lord’s angel. From the other side, the Night of Egypt is a picture of the forces of death, destruction, and confusion that still rise from the depths of the world and of man and threaten that they will destroy the good creation, and they will turn the whole world into a desert, into something uninhabitable. In such a situation, the house protects the family; in other words, the world still needs to be defended from chaos, and creation needs to be protected and repaired.

In the calendar of the nomads from whom Israel inherited the Passover festivals, Passover was the first day of the year when Israel still had to be protected from destruction. Home and family are the bulwarks of life, the place where there is security and peace, the peace of dwelling together that makes life possible and preserves creation. Even in Jesus’ time, after the sacrifice of the lambs in the temple Passover was celebrated in homes and families. It was prescribed that one could not go out of Jerusalem on Passover night. The city was considered a place of salvation from the night of chaos, and its walls were like a dike defending creation. Israel had to make a pilgrimage to this city every year at Passover to return to its roots, to be re-created, and to re-embrace its salvation, liberation, and foundation.

There is a profound wisdom. People are always in danger of being scattered during the year, both externally and internally, and they will lose the inner foundations that order them. It needs to return to its ancient foundations. Easter was meant to be this annual return Israel is accessible from the dangers and confusion present in every person. It was an opportunity to take root in its foundation and had hitherto guided it to its unbroken defense and the restoration of its origins. And because Israel knew that over it shone the star of the election, it also knew that from its success or failure, something would result for the whole world, that in its existence or its downfall, the fate of the entire earth and creation was at stake.

Jesus also celebrated Easter according to these prescriptions: in the house, with his family, with the apostles, who became his new family. Thus, he was, on the one hand, obedient to the commandment that was then in force and according to which pilgrims going to Jerusalem could form associations of pilgrims, called havurot, which for that night formed a Passover house and family. And so Easter also became a holiday for Christians. We are Jesus’ havurah, his family, which he founded with the companions of his wanderings, and friends who walk the path of the Gospel across the landscape of history. As his companions in his pilgrimage, we are his house. So the Church is a new family and a new city that is to us what Jerusalem was: a living house that drives away the forces of evil and is a place of peace that preserves creation and ourselves. The Church is a new city like Jesus’ family, a living Jerusalem. Her faith is a wall and bulwark against the threats of the forces of confusion that want to destroy the world. Its walls are fortified by the sign of the blood of Jesus Christ, that is, by a love that gives itself to the uttermost and is without end. This love is the opposite force of chaos; it is the creative force that is constantly re-creating the world, nations, and families, and so offers us shalom, a place of peace in which we can live with one another, for one another.

There are many reasons for us to think again about these relationships in our day and to allow them to speak to us. Because we see the power of chaos, we see how, just amid a developed society that thinks it knows and can do everything, chaos’s primordial forces are rising against what it calls its progress. We see how a people of rights amid their wealth, technical ability, and scientific dominion over the world can be destroyed from within, and all of creation can be threatened by the forces of confusion that nestle at the bottom of the human heart and threaten the world.