Four parts of Passover and Eucharist. Why four?

This article aims to show the inner logic of this special liturgy the Passover is. God himself inscribed the logic of the Passover, through inspired authors, of whom Moses played an essential role, into the literary structure according to which the first eighteen chapters of the Book of Exodus were composed.

The logic of the Passover was simultaneously read from The Passover Haggadah as a Jewish liturgical book, which was the fruit of a long process of formation in the Tradition of Israel, and finally written down as a help for the father of the family, who is to guard its faithful realization in the annual celebration.

One has shown that the four-element structure of Passover was built on an earlier structure of covenant-making ceremony that was held by rulers of countries in the ancient Middle East around the 16th to 12th centuries before Christ. It is the discovery of this relationship – the Passover ritual and the covenant-making ceremony – that makes it clear that the liturgical order of the elements of the Passover is inscribed in the logic of the covenant-making ceremony. Simultaneously, one has shown that the covenant in question is not the well-known covenant on Mount Sinai, but a slightly earlier covenant of the Passover/Exodus, i.e., the one that God made with Israel during the passing through divided waters of the Red Sea.

Answering the question contained in the title of the article, one has shown that the four cups of the Passover are related to the four main parts of its liturgy, and they in turn – to the four stages of the exodus from Egypt and simultaneously with the four elements of the covenant-making ceremony.

During the analysis of the four parts of the Passover ritual, analogies between them and the four parts of the Eucharistic ritual were pointed out. Furthermore, it was pointed out that, just as the four-stage exodus from Egypt is embraced by the ‘preparation – completion’ frame, so there is the ‘before-seder – after-seder’ frame for the Passover and also the Eucharist: at the beginning, it is the time when the community prepares to enter into the seriousness of the liturgy; at the end, it is the time of prayers, when the liturgical community accepts new spiritual gifts from God.

Finally, one presented the biblical grounds for the anticipation and its presence in the third part of the Passover and Eucharist. Concerning the Eucharistic rite, one gave a new, connected to the anticipation, explanation of ‘the remembrance’ as a sacrifice that Jesus makes of Himself dying on Golgotha, the sacrifice already present, by the power of liturgical anticipation, in Cenacle. This Memorial Sacrifice, made of Jesus in the state of sacrificial dying on Golgotha, ensures the return of Jesus from the Abyss; it is the type of sacrifice that people used to offer in antiquity before going out to battle. Jesus does not offer this Sacrifice in Heaven, but in Cenacle, on the night before His Passion and Death on Golgotha, before going out to fight against the Devil to make us free from the power of Death.

To complete the whole analysis, one has shown that the practical consequence of the theology of Passover and Eucharist is the need to renew in Eucharistic communities the practice of the first centuries of Christianity, where the end of official liturgy did not mean the believers come back to their homes, but something contrary. Namely, they used to practice remaining on praying in sacramental union with the Lord Jesus.