Annotation CX

”And when evening was come, he reclined with the twelve.” — Matthew 26:20

Whether Christ celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth [day of the] moon. / Whether Christ consecrated in unleavened [bread].

Euthymius, explaining this passage in the commentaries on Matthew, hands down two [things] foreign to the rite of the Latin Church. The first is that Christ celebrated the Passover and completed the last supper on the thirteenth day of the lunar month, but suffered and was crucified on the fourteenth. The second is that Christ, in the last supper, after the legal eating of the lamb, used leavened bread, and that in it he instituted the sacrament of his body and blood. These indeed fight diametrically with the decrees of the Latin Church and of the Roman faith; which first asserts that Christ ate the paschal lamb on the fourteenth [day of the] moon, as did the other Jews also — because, as Chrysostom says, he always kept the law until death — but suffered on the fifteenth [day of the] moon. Then [the Latin Church] affirms that in that supper no other bread was set out than unleavened; because Matthew, Mark, and Luke testify that the time of the supper was the first day of unleavened bread, on which it was not lawful to eat leavened [bread]; and accordingly that Christ confected the sacrament of his body from unleavened [bread], and left us an example of consecrating in unleavened [bread].

The more recent Greeks defend Euthymius’s opinion from the gospel of John — in which it is read that Christ supped with the disciples before the feast day of the Passover,¹ that is (as they expound), on the thirteenth [day of the] moon, when leavened bread was still in the houses. It is also had, in the same gospel, that Christ was slain on the day of the Preparation [parasceve], John saying: “And they themselves did not enter into the praetorium, lest they be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover”;² and again below, “Now it was the Preparation”; and, a little after, “There they laid him, because of the Preparation of the Jews.”³ Which words, according to their interpretation, show that Christ was slain on that day on which the lamb was slain — that is, on the fourteenth [day of the] moon, on which was the Preparation, that is, the preparation of the Passover: for on its evening the lamb was immolated, and the eating of the unleavened [bread] began. They say also that Christ, by [way of] dispensation, anticipated the legal supper by one day, and completed the Passover before the lawful time, lest the passion of the cross should take from him the opportunity of eating the mystical lamb with his disciples. For he knew that he would be slain on the fourteenth [day of the] moon — so that on that day on which the figurative lamb was immolated, the true Lamb also might be immolated, and the truth might in this way correspond to the figure.

But since the present altercation of the Latins and Greeks took its beginning from that [seeming] controversy which appears to be between John and the other evangelists: it is to be known that that day is the same [day] which the three Evangelists called “the first [day] of unleavened bread,” and which John named “before the feast day of the Passover” — that is, the fourteenth [day of the] moon, in whose evening the solemnity of unleavened bread, or of the Passover, began, and the lamb was immolated, and with it the unleavened [loaves] were eaten, when no more leaven was found in the houses of the Jews, the Law so commanding in the volume of Exodus. Nor

Nor does that fight with these [things] which John wrote — that the Jews were unwilling to enter Pilate’s praetorium, lest they be defiled, but [that they wished to] eat the Passover. For in that place “Passover” does not signify the paschal lamb — for the Jews had already eaten it the past night, on which Christ supped with his disciples (which is gathered from Matthew,⁴ who says: “And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they immolated the Passover,” etc.) — but it signified the unleavened loaves, which had to be eaten for seven continuous days, of which the first and most celebrated was that day on which Christ was slain — namely, the fifteenth [day of the] moon, beginning (as has already been said) from the evening of the fourteenth. But that which John adds — that on that day was the Preparation — is not to be interpreted of the parasceve of the Passover, on which the Jews prepared themselves for the eating of the lamb (which was to be immolated toward the evening of the fourteenth [day of the] moon), but of the parasceve of the following Sabbath, which was called “the Sabbath of the Passover,” because it had fallen within the paschal week, and was therefore held more celebrated than other sabbaths — as the Evangelist indicates,⁵ saying: “For that day of the Sabbath was a great [day].” Wherefore, since that day was festive by a twofold right — both on account of the Sabbath, and on account of the paschal week (which was wholly festive) — there was need also of a great preparation for its celebration. From these [things], then, it is established that Christ completed the supper on the fourteenth day of the month, toward the evening of the Passover — that is, on the fifth day of the week — and instituted the sacrament of his body in that kind of bread on which it was then lawful to feed at the tables of the Jews, namely unleavened, and without any leaven. Preserving which rite, the catholic Church of the Latins, by best right, commands that unleavened bread be consecrated in the sacred mysteries.