Passover Meal

It was with great excitement and anticipation that quite a number of people made their way to St. Michael’s auditorium on Saturday 4th March, for the Passover Meal. For me, personally, the entire experience of making the amazing journey into past jewish tradition and culture , far exceeded all my expectations. Fr. Ashwin Castellino, kept us spellbound, riveted and completely centred on the goings-on in the jewish household, as he painstakingly took us through biblical history, explaining in detail, the meaning and significance of each part and moment of a long drawn-out meal, its correspondence with Sacred Scripture and its linkage to the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ which is relieved at every Eucharistic Celebration. It was a great joy for me to transport myself in my imagination into an average jewish household and to learn that every part of the meal as well as every item eaten or partaken of has a symbolic significance to Holy Week (from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday), and especially to my daily Mass.

Interspersed with appropriate Scripture texts, prayers and hymns in which we all participated, the meaning and the significance of the leaven, the bitter herbs, the Hillel sandwich, the four cups of wine, the matzah, the Afikomen, the charoset, and each action performed during the meal , and their application to our lives were laid out before us in a scholarly manner, thus helping us appreciate much more God’s Word and the Eucharist.

We left the auditorium standing in awe of the richness of our faith and an intense to draw even closer to our ever-loving God, especially during this season of lent.