T HE paschal mystery is, in a sense, the whole Christian mystery.
But this Christian mystery reveals its inexhaustible content by
means of the different perspectives under which it is considered.
And it is the Old Testament which shows these dimensions accord-
ing to which the Christian mystery is to be thought about. The
Pasch, in the most limited sense of the word, is one of these dimen-
sions, including various aspects under which the mystery of Christ
is shown to us. The whole of Christianity is the fulfillment of these
paschal realities: in a sense, it is not the liturgical feast of Easter,
it is the very mystery of the Redemption and its sacramental par-
ticipation which are prefigured by the Pasch. But the liturgical
feast of Easter emphasizes more especially the characteristics which
make the Christian mystery a development of the Jewish Pasch. It
is these characteristics which we are now to study. Our task is to
see how patristic tradition understood the typological interpreta-
tion of the twelfth chapter of Exodus, which is the paschal text par
excellence.

The history of Exodus begins by giving chronological directions:
the month of the Pasch is to be considered as the first of months;
the lamb is to be taken on the tenth day of the month and eaten
on the fourteenth, towards evening. These directions constitute
the specifying element of the Pasch: it is the time when it is to be
celebrated which characterizes the liturgical feast of the Pasch in

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