The building of the Temple in Jerusalem, in 960 BC, meant that Israel kept offering sacrifices to God.. The priests offered two lambs daily one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to make up for the sins and offences of the nation. During the day private sacrifices of goats, doves, lambs and other animals were offered. These offerings took place on the big bronze altar at the entrance of the Temple. We have to remember that the Temple was erected on the same site where Melchisedeck once offered ‘bread and wine’, and where Abram was about to offer his son Isaac……and where God had sworn to save all nations.
The Day of the Jewish easter was the most important date in the Jewish calendar. On that day Jerusalem hosted about two and a half million pilgrims, coming from all round the known world. What value did these sacrifices have ? The burnt victims offered as sacrifice to God, were not enough to satisfy God. He wanted an ‘internal’ sacrifice as we find in Psalm 51,19: “You have no delight in sacrifice: if I brought you an offering, you would not accept it. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a wounded heart, O God, you would not despise.” Jesus, used to observe the day of easter every year. We can imagine how often He ate of the sacrificed lamb, first with His family and later on with His apostles. A Jew, worthy of the name, had to participate in the easter meal, thereby renewing his ‘pact’, his ‘covenant’ his testament’ with God.
The easter celebration was central for the mission of Christ, because it was a definite and decisive moment. Jesus was the Lamb, and when He was in front of Pontius Pilate, St,John tells us that “it was the day in preparation for easter, it was about the sixth hour”. John certainly knew that the sixth hour meant when the priests starting slaying the lambs of offering. Then, THIS, was the moment when the ‘Lamb of God’ was about to be sacrificed. He goes on to tell us that ‘no bones were broken from Christ’s Body’ (Prophet David’s prophecy). Jesus was offered sour wine, on a hyssop branch. This sour wine was a mixture meant to deaden a bit the pain of the victim on the cross, it was called the ‘poscha’, but Christ refused to have it.
As regards the hyssop branch, this was used by the priests to sprinkle the people with the blood of the sacrificed animal at easter. We can meditate much about the relation we find in the Old Tetament and the New Testament as regards the rites followed during the Jewish easter and the true Easter, when Christ was risen from death, after offering Himself on the Cross. We conclude by referring to St.John that ‘in the new and definite Sacrifice of Easter, Jesus was both the Priest and the Victim’. Christ’s Sacrifice on the cross accomplished what the blood of millions of lambs, goats, rams, doves…could never attain.
We find this same thought in Paul’s Letter to the Jews wherein he stated that ‘it was impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to wipe away the sins. The blood of a quarter of a million slaughtered animals could never save the Jewish nations, much less the whole world. To atone, make up for the sins against God, who is infinitely perfect in goodness and eternal, humanity needed a perfect Sacrifice; a good sacrifice, spotless sacrifice, and infinitely worthy sacrifice…like God Himself. This was to be undertaken by God Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ, who alone could atone for all the sins by means of His own sacrifice. …../4a
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