CCC 1096: Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy. A better knowledge of the Jewish people's faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy. For both Jews and Christians Sacred Scripture is an essential part of their respective liturgies: in the proclamation of the Word of God, the response to this word, prayer of praise and intercession for the living and the dead, invocation of God's mercy. In its characteristic structure the Liturgy of the Word originates in Jewish prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical texts and formularies, as well as those of our most venerable prayers, including the Lord's Prayer, have parallels in Jewish prayer. The Eucharistic Prayers also draw their inspiration from the Jewish tradition. The relationship between Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy, but also their differences in content, are particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, such as Passover. Christians and Jews both celebrate the Passover. For Jews, it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future; for Christians, it is the Passover fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, though always in expectation of its definitive consummation.

...the current Haggadah has remained basically intact for at least 1,500 years. Even so, it's not at all unusual for text to be modified to interpret world events, or to incorporate linguistic innovations such as inclusive language.....More recently, any number of haggadot have emerged to include references to twenty-first century culture. I mention this because Come to the Table using as it does a traditional seder structure to organize our Catholic Christian observance of the Jewish exodus during Holy Week, falls well within the Jewish tradition of text-tweaking to make a point. Indeed.

Meanwhile, I suggest we pay closer attention to what Catholics already share with Jewish people regarding ritual and meaning. Come to the Table does this by offering a Passover seder that draws inspiration and structure from, but does not replicate, the Jewish seder. Our belief in Jesus Christ makes simply using the traditional Jewish seder not only inappropriate, but also impossible -- we are Christians. So here, you'll be invited to draw upon core Christian precepts to deepen your appreciation of Passover as the Historic antecedent of our Holy Week.

More than 30 years later, this debate flared up again with publication of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII Viking, 1999). Author John Cornwell acquired access to Vatican documents that he intially believed would exonerate Pius XII from charges of Nazi complicity, only to discover that he would need to write quite a different book."

She loves knowing that the same words will be read, and that the same ceremonial foods will be blessed and eaten in the same order. "I love this connectedness," she wrote in one of our email exchanges. "I don't demean the 'frivolity.' This is the irreverent reverence that comes from familiarity and fitting in one's own skin, if even for just a few hours. And I do believe that all Jews who observe Passover feel the same."