While they were eating, Jesus took a piece of bread, gave a prayer of thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples. "Take and eat it," he said; "this is my body."

This started an angry argument among them. "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" they asked.

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them to life on the last day.

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me, and I live in them.

Boil the meat and eat it at the one place of worship; and the next morning return home.

My strength is gone, gone like water spilled on the ground. All my bones are out of joint; my heart is like melted wax.

The LORD says, "It was my will that he should suffer; his death was a sacrifice to bring forgiveness. And so he will see his descendants; he will live a long life, and through him my purpose will succeed.

Moses said to the people, "Remember this day---the day on which you left Egypt, the place where you were slaves. This is the day the LORD brought you out by his great power. No leavened bread is to be eaten.

For seven days you must not eat any bread made with yeast; there must be no yeast or leavened bread anywhere in your land.

"Do not offer bread made with yeast when you sacrifice an animal to me. Do not keep until the following morning any part of the animal killed at the Passover Festival.

you are permitted to observe it one month later instead, on the evening of the fourteenth day of the second month. Celebrate it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

When you eat this meal, do not eat bread prepared with yeast. For seven days you are to eat bread prepared without yeast, as you did when you had to leave Egypt in such a hurry. Eat this bread---it will be called the bread of suffering---so that as long as you live you will remember the day you came out of Egypt, that place of suffering.

Go on and offer your bread in thanksgiving to God, and brag about the extra offerings you bring! This is the kind of thing you love to do.

Then the disciples understood that he was not warning them to guard themselves from the yeast used in bread but from the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

It is not right for you to be proud! You know the saying, "A little bit of yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise."

Let us celebrate our Passover, then, not with bread having the old yeast of sin and wickedness, but with the bread that has no yeast, the bread of purity and truth.

"It takes only a little yeast to make the whole batch of dough rise," as they say.

(SEE 1:13)

you are permitted to observe it one month later instead, on the evening of the fourteenth day of the second month. Celebrate it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

"I will fill the descendants of David and the other people of Jerusalem with the spirit of mercy and the spirit of prayer. They will look at the one whom they stabbed to death, and they will mourn for him like those who mourn for an only child. They will mourn bitterly, like those who have lost their first-born son.

You imitated us and the Lord; and even though you suffered much, you received the message with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit.