14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
There's no indication that this commandment was ever abrogated or superseded (as were Works of the Law such as the bloody animal sacrifices and circumcision).
The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) depict Jesus, at the Last Supper (a Passover feast), transforming/perfecting the Old Covenant Passover event in order that it be carried over into the New Covenant, thus enabling Christians of all time to keep God's directive to celebrate it forever. Jesus, the true Lamb of God (John1:29), changed bread & wine into His flesh & blood for the participants to eat because the Passover rules required them to eat the sacrificial lamb. (Notice, there is no mention of a baby sheep or goat in the Upper Room. This is because Jesus is Passover Lamb for this and all future Passover feasts.) He also commanded and empowered the Apostles to perform this same miraculous conversion, with His words "Do this...". Those Apostles handed on this empowerment to their successors so that we today, nearly 2000 years later can still obey God's directive and celebrate the Passover (in the Mass, the Eucharist), transported into the Upper Room on that night, to commune physically with the Lamb. In John 6 Jesus says "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." This reflects the Passover requirement of the people of God to eat the sacrificial Lamb (truly, not symbolically). If the Lamb was not eaten, death would ensue. When we partake of the Eucharist, we eat the Passover Lamb presented in the Upper Room and are preserved from death, spiritually, and sometimes physically, as miraculous healings have occurred through the ages by the agency of the Eucharist.
Paul supports the Real Presence of Jesus in the form of bread & wine in Ephesians 5:30-32 " For we are members of his
body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man
leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two
shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery:
but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
Paul is saying that in the marriage covenant the man & woman become one flesh (they partake of eachother in a physical, material way and each belongs to the other). He lets us know that our covenantal relationship with Jesus also includes sharing in a physical, material manner. In the marriage covenant it is achieved through sexual union, in the covenant with Jesus ("The new covenant in my blood") it is achieved through the ritual He instituted at the Last Supper. Today it's called Eucharist or the Mass.By participating in the Mass, Catholics obey God's directive to celebrate the Passover memorial feast instituted in Exodus 12. Those who do not participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are not keeping the Feast (as Paul says in 1Cor5 "... Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast,...") and are hence not being obedient to God because they are not celebrating the Passover as directed.
For more Scriptural support of the reality of Jesus in the Eucharist check these out:
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/4cp.html
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/ech.html
The Bible and the Mass:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/studies/courses/online/the_lambs_supper_the_bible_and_the_mass
Church Fathers on the subject:
http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/realp.htm
Eucharistic Miracles
http://home.sprynet.com/~bryaneadm/miracles.htm
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/eucharistic-miracles-evidence-of-the-real-presence
P.S.:
Non-Catholics wonder why they are not allowed to participate in the Catholic Communion ceremony. One reason is that they do not share all the Catholic beliefs. Participating in the Communion ritual implies that one agrees with the doctrines of those with whom one is communing. If a person participates in Communion when he is not really "in communion", he is making a liar out of himself or the congregation with whom he's, superficially, communing.
A couple other reasons...
1) God commanded (Exodus12) that only those who were full members of the family could participate (ie all the males had to be circumcised, even servants who wanted to participate) in the Passover celebration.
2) To participate without believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated host is to bring God's judgement upon oneself. As Paul put it: "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." 1Cor11:29. So, when the Christian is disallowed to participate, their Catholic friends are actually protecting them from God's wrath. Be grateful, my friend.
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Other notes on Scriptural indications for the idea that the consecrated Bread and Wine ARE the Flesh and Blood of Jesus...
OT pre-figurements:
Genesis: Abraham & Melchisedeck
Ezekiel 39: vv 17-19, God describes how His people will eat worthy flesh and worthy blood (as opposed to pagans' sacrifices of flesh and blood of inferior creatures), of the sacrifice He will provide (which is fulfilled in Jesus, the Lamb of God, given to us to eat via the Last Supper).
"eat" someone's flesh, "eat up" someone: Scriptural context...
Psalm 27 "eat up my flesh" means to persecute, destroy.
Greek OT uses "fagit" (root fago, to eat/dine)
John6 Jesus uses fago, then switches to trogo, to emphasize actual feasting on His flesh
Jesus was taken literally because in Jewish cultural/language context, to eat someone's flesh in a figurative way is to persecute or slander them. Jesus could not, therefore, have been speaking figuratively (ie, to mean "consume my teachings"), but literally. That's why He switched to trogo, in order to stress His point that we must literally eat His flesh (which He made available to us one year later when He gave bread, saying "Take THIS and eat it. THIS is my body." This fulfills His statement in John 6 where He said "The bread I will give is my flesh.").
In John 6, Jesus was not speaking symbollically. To use the phrase "eat my flesh" symbolically, Jesus would have been saying "insult, slander me". That is the way the phrase was used in the Jewish culture of that time and place: to insult, to slander, or otherwise do ill to someone. Scripture demonstrates this symbolic use of the the phrase "to eat" someone...
Psalm 14 & 53 (similar psalms)
4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord.
Psalm 27
2 When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.
Galatians 5
14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
The miracles of multiplication of the loaves Jesus performed (where He "gave" bread) were prior to Him saying (John 6) "the bread I will give is my flesh" (note the future tense "will")... the next time He "gave" bread was the next Passover a year later, the Last Supper... the miracles of multiplication foreshadowed the Eucharist by providing more than enough bread for all who partook of it. The "leftovers" implies the infinite servings of Jesus' glorified Flesh available to feed all people of all time. (Some folks object to the doctrine of the Eucharist on the basis of Jesus' human Body being a limited thing as ours are, but Jesus' glorified body is not constrained by this universe's natural laws, never mind the fact that Jesus is a divine person (having human nature AND God nature, and so He is infinitely powerful and can make His Flesh superabundant.)
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