25 March 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”” Luke 22:19
On the night before he suffered, Jesus gathered his apostles in the upper room. “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” At that table he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and said: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And after supper he took the cup: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” On this night the Holy Qurbono was born.
Exodus tells of the first Passover: a lamb without blemish, its blood on the doorposts, eaten in haste by a people ready to leave slavery. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Jesus is the true Passover Lamb. His blood marks us, his Body feeds us for the journey from slavery to freedom, from death to life.
At the same table Jesus gave his apostles a lesson in greatness: “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” In our tradition the washing of feet makes this visible. The Eucharist and service cannot be separated: the One who gives his Body washes our feet.
St Paul hands on what he received: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” He also warns against receiving unworthily. Pesaha is the night to thank God for the Holy Qurbono and the priesthood, to examine our hearts, and to stay awake with Jesus as he goes out to Gethsemane.
Theme: “This is my body, given for you.”
On this holy night Jesus eats the Passover with his disciples, gives us the Holy Qurbono and the priesthood, and washes their feet. Everything we are as a Church flows from this Upper Room.
“The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you.” Exodus 12:13
“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”” Luke 22:19–20
Apply: Receive Holy Communion tonight with deep faith that it is truly the Lord.
“On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” Isaiah 25:6
“And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”” Revelation 19:9
Apply: Pray tonight for your priests, and for vocations to the priesthood.
“Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.” Genesis 18:4
“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13:14–15
Apply: Do one humble service at home tonight or tomorrow, especially for someone you find difficult.
Jesus loved his own to the end. In the bread and the cup he gives himself; in the basin and towel he shows how to love.
Let us receive him with faith, adore him with gratitude, and serve one another with humility.
Take-home resolution: Stay with the Lord in prayer for an hour tonight, as he asked his disciples.
Dear brothers and sisters, tonight we enter the upper room. Jesus says: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” He knew what was coming: betrayal, arrest, the Cross. And on that night he gave us his greatest gift.
“He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The lamb of the first Passover saved Israel from death; Jesus, the true Lamb, gives himself to save the whole world. Every Holy Qurbono since that night is this same gift.
And at the same table Jesus taught them how to be great: “I am among you as one who serves.” He knelt and washed their feet. We cannot receive the Body of Christ and refuse to serve the body of Christ in our brothers and sisters. The altar and the towel belong together.
Tonight, at home, families will break the Pesaha appam. Let it be a real family communion: forgive one another, remember those far away, thank God for the Qurbono and for our priests. And after supper, do not leave Jesus alone. Stay with him, as he goes out to pray in Gethsemane. Amen.
Children, tonight is Pesaha. The night before Jesus died, he had a special supper with his friends. He took bread and said: “This is my body.” He took the cup and said: “This is my blood.” That was the first Holy Qurbono!
Then Jesus knelt down and washed his friends' feet, like a servant. He wanted to teach them to love and help one another.
Tonight at home, help someone without being asked. Let's say: “Thank you, Jesus, for giving us yourself!”
Lord Jesus, on the night you were betrayed you gave us your Body and Blood and washed your disciples' feet. Thank you for the Holy Qurbono and for the priesthood. Make us worthy to receive you, humble to serve one another, and faithful to stay with you in your agony. Amen.
Tonight every reading leads to one table. The Lectionary gives eight, and they circle the upper room. The Evening Gospel (John 7:37–53) hears Jesus cry out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me”. Leviticus 16:3–10 shows the high priest preparing for the Day of Atonement. Proverbs 1:10–19 warns against those who lie in wait for blood, and one of the Twelve is doing that this very night. Isaiah 24:16–23 sees the Lord reigning on Mount Zion, and Revelation 19:5–16 opens the marriage supper of the Lamb.
We study here the three that carry the night. Exodus gives the lamb and the blood on the door. Paul hands on what he received about the bread and the cup, and warns a divided community. Luke sets us at the table itself, where the Lord gives his Body and Blood and then tells his quarrelling apostles that he is among them as one who serves. The key words are remembrance, covenant and service.
Setting.
Nine plagues have struck Egypt, and Pharaoh will not let Israel go. Before the last plague, and before anyone has left, God tells the people how to eat a meal. The liberation has not yet happened, and already its memorial is being instituted. The story stops for instructions because this night is meant for every generation who will come after.
Many scholars think that older customs of the shepherd's spring offering and of the farmer's unleavened bread lie behind this rite, and that Israel received them anew as the memorial of the Exodus. Whatever the prehistory, the Bible's concern is what God did. The Jewish people keep this night to this day, and the Catechism speaks of it with reverence: for Jews it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future, and for Christians it is fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, while we await its definitive completion (CCC 1096).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“This month shall mark for you the beginning of months;” (12:2)
Before God changes Israel's place, he changes its calendar. Redemption becomes the beginning of time. In the same way, the Lord's Pasch stands at the centre of the Church's year (CCC 1169).
“a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.” (12:3)
This feast is kept in the home. If a household is too small, it joins its neighbour (v. 4). Salvation has a family shape, and no one is meant to eat alone.
“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.” (12:5)
The Hebrew word for the animal covers both a lamb and a kid. John the Baptist's words will gather all this up: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
“They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.” (12:7)
The blood marks the very place of the meal. Those who eat are those under the sign. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (12:13) is God's promise, not a magic rule: he binds himself to a sign that he gave.
“This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” (12:11)
A meal eaten standing ready. The bread of the Exodus is food for people on the way, and that is what the Holy Qurbono remains for us.
How the Church reads it.
St Paul says it in a sentence: “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). John notes that no bone of Jesus was broken (John 19:36), echoing the rule of the lamb (Exodus 12:46). The Catechism places the Last Supper within this memorial: by celebrating it in the setting of the Passover, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning (CCC 1340), and in the Bible a memorial is not only a recollection but a making present of what God did (CCC 1363). St Melito of Sardis built a whole Easter homily on this chapter, reading the lamb as the figure of Christ (On the Pascha, in substance), and Aphrahat the Persian sage, writing in Syriac, teaches that the Lord gave his Body and Blood to his disciples with his own hands before he was crucified (Demonstration 12, in substance).
Setting.
Paul writes from Ephesus (16:8), probably in the mid-50s. This is the oldest written account we have of the Lord's Supper, older than the writing of the Gospels. He brings it up because of a scandal. When the Corinthians gather, each goes ahead with his own supper, “and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk” (11:21). Many scholars think that those of means, who could arrive early, ate well while the poor came late from their work and found little. Paul's answer to a social problem is to go back to the night of the betrayal.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,” (11:23)
Paul was not in the upper room. He stands within a chain which begins with the Lord. He begins his account by saying when it took place: on the night of the betrayal. It is love's answer to the worst thing done to it.
“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (11:24)
“For you” is the heart of it. Paul takes the words literally enough to say in v. 27 that the one who eats unworthily “will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord”. Earlier he has asked, “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (10:16).
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (11:25)
This recalls the “new covenant” of Jeremiah 31:31, and the blood of the covenant at Sinai (Exodus 24:8). God's covenant with Israel, which he has never revoked (CCC 121), comes in Jesus to the fullness which the prophets promised.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (11:26)
The liturgy itself is a proclamation. It looks to the past, to his death, and to the future, “until he comes”, and it does so in the present, at this table.
“Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” (11:28)
The Catechism takes this as the basis of preparing for Communion: anyone conscious of grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation first (CCC 1385, 1457).
“For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” (11:29)
“The body” means the Lord's Body in the sacrament, and in this letter it also means the Church: “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (10:17). To shame the poor at the table is to fail to see both.
“So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” (11:33)
After such a solemn teaching, a very simple rule. Reverence for the Body at the altar shows itself in how we treat the body at the door.
How the Church reads it.
The Council of Trent and the Catechism teach that with “Do this in remembrance of me” the Lord made his apostles priests of the New Covenant (CCC 611, 1337), and that the Eucharist re-presents the one sacrifice of the Cross, in an unbloody manner, and does not add another to it (CCC 1366–1367). St Cyril of Jerusalem tells the newly baptized not to regard the bread and wine as simple elements, since by the Lord's declaration they are his Body and Blood (Mystagogical Catecheses 4, in substance). St John Chrysostom presses Paul's other point: you have tasted the Blood of the Lord, and you do not recognize your brother (Homilies on 1 Corinthians 27, quoted in CCC 1397).
Setting.
Luke presents the Supper as a Passover meal (22:7–13) and as a farewell. Ancient farewell speeches often gather a leader's last instructions at a table, and Luke places here sayings about betrayal, greatness and the future of the Twelve. Only Luke places the dispute about greatness at the Supper itself. It stands right after the gift of the Eucharist, and no reader can miss how sad that is. John 13 teaches the same lesson with the washing of the feet.
Later Jewish sources describe several cups of wine at the Passover table. That may be why Luke mentions a cup before the bread (v. 17) and another after supper (v. 20).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer;” (22:15)
“With you” matters as much as “this Passover”. He knows what awaits him, and what he longs for is to be at table with these men.
“This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (22:19)
A note on the text: a few ancient witnesses, chiefly Codex Bezae, lack the words from “which is given” through v. 20. Nearly all the manuscripts have them, and the NRSV and POC print them, as the Church reads them. He took, gave thanks, broke and gave: Luke's disciples at Emmaus will know the Lord “in the breaking of the bread” (24:35).
“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (22:20)
“Poured out” is the language of sacrifice, the blood at the altar (Leviticus 4:7). Before anything is done to him, Jesus gives his death its meaning. He gives himself before anyone can take him (John 10:18; CCC 609–610).
“But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table.” (22:21)
The Eucharist is given in the same room as the betrayal, and Jesus does not send anyone away. Mercy and warning are in the same sentence (v. 22).
“But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” (22:26)
“Benefactor” (v. 25) was a title that Hellenistic kings actually took. Jesus does not abolish leadership among the Twelve. He gives it a different form.
“But I am among you as one who serves.” (22:27)
The one giving the banquet is on his feet. Here is the charter of all authority in the Church, and our tradition makes it visible in the washing of the feet.
“so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (22:30)
The men who were arguing a moment ago are promised a table and thrones, and are told that they “have stood by me in my trials” (v. 28), though they will shortly run away. This is what grace looks like. The Twelve, whose number recalls Israel's twelve tribes, will share his work (CCC 551, 765).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sets the Lord's words beside the Passover: by the Last Supper he gave it its new meaning, and anticipated his passing over to the Father (CCC 1339–1340). He looked forward to its fulfilment in the Kingdom (Luke 22:16, 18), and so the Eucharist is a pledge of the glory to come (CCC 1403). St John Chrysostom, preaching on the betrayal, says that it is not a man who makes the gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, but Christ himself, who was crucified for us: the priest stands there, and the power and grace are of God (in substance). St Ephrem (Mar Aprem), in his hymns on the Unleavened Bread, sings of the true Lamb to whom the paschal lamb pointed, at that table (in substance).
Was the Last Supper a Passover meal? The Gospels seem to differ.
Mark, Matthew and Luke present it as a Passover meal. John places the death of Jesus on the day of Preparation, when the Passover had not yet been eaten (18:28; 19:14), so that he dies at the hour of the lambs. Scholars discuss how to reconcile them, and no answer has won general agreement. All four agree on what matters: it took place in the setting of Passover, and Jesus is its true Lamb (CCC 1339–1340).
If Christ's sacrifice was once for all, how is the Holy Qurbono a sacrifice?
It is not a second sacrifice. Christ's offering of himself is one and is never repeated (Hebrews 9:26). The Qurbono is its memorial and makes it present: the same victim, the same priest, offering now through the ministry of priests, only the manner of offering being different (CCC 1366–1367).
Does 1 Corinthians 11:30 mean that sickness is punishment for bad Communions?
Paul is speaking about what he sees in this one community at a particular time, and he reads it as discipline that saves, “so that we may not be condemned” (v. 32). He does not teach that every illness has such a cause. Jesus himself refuses that reasoning (John 9:2–3).
We celebrate the Holy Qurbono tonight at the hour of its institution, and the words the priest says over the bread and wine are the words of the upper room. In our tradition the washing of the feet makes visible what Luke teaches. In many Kerala Christian homes, Pesaha bread is also broken and shared in the family on this night, and customs differ from place to place. In 2027 the date of the Annunciation falls on this same day, and we follow the direction of our eparchy on how it is kept. St Augustine records an old belief that the Lord was both conceived and crucified on 25 March (On the Trinity 4.5, in substance). The flesh that the Word took in Mary's womb is the Body given at this table.