Tonight we enter the holiest time of the Christian year, the Triduum Sacrum, the Three Sacred Days. Throughout the world, and throughout our communities, God's people are gathering to hear again the great stories of deliverance and redemption, and to ponder what this truly means. It is a truly holy time.

The reading from Exodus says that the blood of the lamb placed on the houses of the Israelites shall save God's people: ... when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you. St. Paul writes that in keeping this sacred ritual meal, Jesus became the new paschal lamb: this is my body ...this cup is the new covenant in my blood that would cause the sting of death to forever pass over God's people. The blood of the Lamb of God would not be signed on houses, but shed from the cross, would be signed on all people forever.

Tonight the first act of the mystery of the Passion unfolds. The Lord Jesus gives his people the sure and certain sign of his presence until he comes again, the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood. The Lord also gives his people a new commandment: "that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." This mandate, the Maundy, is expressed in Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Tonight these two commands are carried out even as we anticipate the agony of the garden, the betrayal, arrest and torture, the mocking, the abandonment, and the execution Jesus will endure.

Saved by the blood of the lamb. Delivered from the power of our enemy by the shedding of blood. Lamb of God, have mercy on us. And so the Triduum Sacrum begins with the Real Presence of Christ - in the Holy Eucharist, and in his sanctified people.