On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples approached Jesus and said,
Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?
He said,
Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, “My appointed time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”’
The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered, and prepared the Passover.
— Matthew 26
Peace be with you. Today our Jewish brothers and sisters begin the celebration Passover with the Seder meal. Passover remembers how God freed the chosen people from the oppression of the Egyptians and commemorates the beginning of a journey that would lead them to the “promised land”.
In the promised land, the chosen people were to live in freedom. They would be free from want, and would become a wise people who lived in harmony with God and each other. Much like a Christian journey, it was not a straight line from one place to the other; there was not an immediate surrender of one way of life to another. No, it proved to be a winding road and a journey of many years. Some of this was caused by people not listening, clinging to old ways of life and unwilling to follow the directions. The length of the journey, as Father Mark pointed out in one of his homilies, was God’s desire to spend time with His people — to afford them an opportunity to know Him — to see the wisdom of His ways, and to demonstrate that he would be there for the long journey of life.
It is much the same way today. God desires to travel with us, and make us wise and prosperous. As we come to the end of this years Lenten journey may it have made us more open to God’s leadership, and timeless wisdom. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.