My grandmother Gabrielina lived in my parents’ home all my childhood years until she died when I was 17. She was a widow and helped me and my siblings learn to be religious and good people. My parents worked hard so that we could have the necessary things at home. “God will provide” was a phrase my grandmother used to say at moments when we were short of some things. That phrase is said by a person of faith. Abraham said the phrase as his answer to his son Isaac’s question about the missing lamb for the sacrifice.

The story is from the book of Genesis when God put Abraham to the test. To see how much Abraham trusted in God, God asked him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering to Him. This is one of the most dramatic and startling events from the Old Testament. In Genesis we read that, “As the two [Abraham and Isaac] walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father, ‘Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?’ ‘My son’, Abraham answered, ‘God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering’”.

At the end of the story, Abraham, with knife in hand, raised his arm to sacrifice Isaac. At that point, the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham stopping him from sacrificing Isaac because God then knew that his faith was great. Abraham looked around and saw “a ram caught by its horns in the thicket and took it and offered it in place of his son” (Genesis 22:13).

We can fast forward six centuries and find the true answer to Isaac’s important question. We find it in the Passover lamb, as told in the book of Exodus. The requirements for the Passover lamb perfectly matched the main characteristics of Isaac at the time of the attempted sacrifice: male, young, and without blemish (innocence in Isaac’s case). The real meaning of these two stories from the Old Testament is found in the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross twelve centuries after the first Passover. The Lord was a man, in his early thirties at the time, and sinless.

The sacrifice of the Passover lamb had more elements than Abraham’s attempted sacrifice. For instance, the blood of the victim was to be used to mark the doors of the homes where the Israelites gathered for the meal. The meat was to be roasted and be mandatorily consumed by all the people in the house. Both blood sprinkled and meat eaten will give them, first, protection from God’s destruction of the first-born son and, second, liberation from the power of the Pharaoh.

On the eve of his Passion, the Lord celebrated the annual feast of Passover with his Apostles. What the Apostles did not know was that they were attending the real Passover, of which the initial Passover in Egypt was only a foreshadowing. Isaac and the Passover lamb were only images, parables of the real Passover of the Lord. The real sacrifice of the Passover lamb took place on Good Friday on the cross. The Lord announced it and anticipated it at the Last Supper. There the Lord gave the Apostles and the Church his Body to eat and his Blood to drink. These two elements are the “things” in this world that truly and effectively protect us from God’s judgement and frees us from the power of sin and death. They are not simply bread and wine but are God truly present. They protect and liberate us because they are God himself.

On this most solemn Holy Thursday, let us thank almighty God for his great love for us. He infinitely provided us with the true sacrificial lamb. As the psalmist taught Israel to pray, the Church also prays today, “How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me? The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord” (Psalm 116: 12-13).