HOLY WEEKEND CONNECTS KINDRED SPIRITS.

Byline: James Bemis Commentary

With commencement of Passover coinciding this year with Easter observances, this weekend provides an occasion for most of the county to celebrate its faith.

This providential pairing of holidays invites reflection on the symbolic links between the Passover and Easter celebrations and the strong bonds between the Jewish and Christian religions. As Pope John Paul II observed, the Jewish people are the ``older brothers'' of Christians, and their traditions play a vital role in the history and culture of the West.

Passover commemorates the Israelites' flight from Egypt to the Promised Land, as told in Exodus. God commanded Moses and Aaron to prepare their people for escape by sacrificing an unblemished male lamb, marking the side and upper doorposts of each house with its blood. After offering a share to the Lord, the Israelites were then to eat the lamb, along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread.

This was the Israelites' last meal in Egypt before their redemption from slavery. That night, an angel executed judgment by killing all the firstborn of Egypt, passing over only those houses with the lamb's blood on their doors.

One of the most important covenants of the Jewish people is recounting each year their Exodus to freedom, handing down the story from generation to generation. This exchange takes place at the dinner table in the beautiful Seder ceremony, fulfilling the biblical command that the history of Passover perpetually be retold.

At the Seder, foods symbolize the Israelites' experience: lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, parsley and an egg (suggesting the renewal of life), and salt water, representing the slaves' tears. The Haggada, or ``telling,'' is read, teaching the Passover story through parables, songs, legends and psalms.

Passover preceded the Easter celebration. Christians, too, believe they are saved by the unblemished, sinless Lamb of God in the paschal (Greek for ``Passover'') sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whose body is given up as an offering to God and is shared by the people in the Eucharist. As in the Passover, the appearance of the blood of this Lamb is a sign of redemption.

The Passion of Christ's death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday form the central drama of Christianity, and like the Passover story, are retold and re-enacted by generation after generation. As the Seder honors the Israelites' last meal in Egypt, the Eucharistic sacrifice commemorates Christ's Last Supper.

Further, both Passover and Easter are celebrated in memory of deliverance: As do their Jewish brethren, Christians believe the Lord leads them out of slavery. For the Christian, Easter delivers the faithful from the bondage of sin into the Promised Land of grace, from darkness into light, from death to everlasting life.

In a modern world that worships the immediate and superficial, eight of 10 Ventura County residents find religion to be their rock, their refuge from today's surging tide of the faddish and the fake. It is there that they discover that sense is made of the supreme mystery of mankind's existence, a means provided of understanding the noble and terrible drama known as human history, and a way given to find one's place in the story yet unfolding.

This weekend in our county, then, is a time of reflection and celebration, of meditation and thanksgiving, a chance for flesh and blood to touch what poet T.S. Eliot called ``the permanent things.''