In the spring, a sacred choreography plays out across the East and the West. Every year, the Jewish and Christian calendars are set in motion, gazing toward a common horizon. Despite the frequent disparity in dates, hearts beat in unison with the same memory: that of the Passage.
This memory is expressed through shared narratives, but also through ancestral rituals anchored in specific places. Beyond the beliefs that distinguish, and sometimes divide, there exists a ‘geography of the soul’ common to both Jews and Christians. A geography of crossing, where freedom is never a static possession, but rather a tearing away, a march, and finally, an ascent.
The Time of Rupture: Quitting Egypt
The story begins with an imperative to move. Pesach, the Jewish Passover, celebrates the departure from Egypt (Yetziat Mitzrayim). The Exodus (Exodus 12-14) is the birth certificate of a people torn from slavery. Yet, in Hebrew, Mitzrayim designates not only the land of the Pharaohs but also signifies “narrowness” or “limits.” To celebrate Pesach is to remember that to become free, one must break the chains, leaving the known for the unknown of the Promised Land... to “Pass-over,” as the English name perfectly translates.
Before the road lies the ritual. According to divine command, every Hebrew family had to sacrifice a lamb and mark their lintels with its blood to be spared by the Angel of Death. Today, although the sacrifice has ceased since the destruction of the Temple, the lamb - once eaten at night with loins girded and staff in hand - remains central to the Seder dinner as an unalterable symbol of divine protection.
It is in this millennia-old soil that the Christian faith takes root. Jesus, as a pious Jew, went up to Jerusalem to celebrate this very Passover (Matthew 26:17-19). Saint John the Baptist identifies him as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), and Saint Paul proclaims that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The blood of the Lamb, once on the lintels, is found upon the Cross, a promise of resurrection. For Christians, Easter is nothing other than the “new Passover,” the passage from death to life.
From one narrative to the other, the message is identical: one cannot be free while remaining locked within one’s internal “Egypts.” One must consent to depart.
The Trial of the Desert: The Making of Freedom
Between the departure and the arrival lies the trial of the desert, where traditions echo each other with striking symmetry.
The Hebrews walked for forty years in the Sinai (Numbers 14:33-34).
Forty years for the slave generation to die out and for a generation of free men to be born, capable of living according to Divine Law (Deuteronomy 8:2) after being tested by hunger, thirst, rebellion against their guide Moses, and the temptation of idolatry - that is, the crossing of the supreme prohibition: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
The desert, because it is infinite and constraining, is the place of limits, imposing a radical choice between disobedience and obedience. In Jewish mysticism, it is also the place of the Dabar (“Word”), where one receives the Law (the Ten Commandments or “Ten Words”) because there is nothing else to distract from listening, and God speaks precisely in the silence.
In echo, the Christian tradition places Lent, forty days of fasting, as a time of interior desert, mirroring Christ inaugurating his mission with forty days of solitude facing temptation after his baptism (Matthew 4:1-11).
For the Eastern Churches, “Great Lent” is an intense ascetic preparation,
a collective march through the spiritual desert to purify the soul before the Resurrection.
Pesach and Easter teach us that freedom is proven in the trial: there is no Promised Land without crossing the desert, nor Resurrection without the Passion.
The Ascension: Going Up to Jerusalem
Today as yesterday, this march converges toward a single point: Jerusalem.
In Jewish tradition, Aliyah designates the “ascent” toward the Holy City,
a rise as much physical as it is spiritual during pilgrimage festivals. Even when history or war prevents the journey, the heart remains present there.
This is the profound meaning of the phrase that ritually concludes the Seder meal: “Next year in Jerusalem.” This wish is not merely a geographical formula; it is an affirmation of resilience. It signifies that whatever the exile, dispersion, or trial of the moment, the horizon remains the City of Peace.
In parallel, Palm Sunday marks Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, a prelude to his Passion (Matthew 21:1-11). During the Holy Week, Christians relive this “ascent” toward the cross. On the Via Dolorosa, pilgrims from all over the world literally follow in the footsteps of this history that has become universal. The apogee of this fervor is undoubtedly the ceremony of the Holy Fire, celebrated by the Orthodox on Holy Saturday at the Holy Sepulchre. This miracle of fire spontaneously springing from the tomb gathers thousands of believers in indescribable emotion.
In both traditions, Jerusalem remains the magnetic pole of hope, the place where the promise of redemption must be fulfilled.
Keeping Believing to Make the Crossing
Why recall these links?
Because in an Orient too often torn by competing claims of belonging and territorial conflicts, Easter and Passover offer another narrative, particularly in this year 2026, when Jerusalem will be unable to host either pilgrimages or public gatherings due to war. The impossibility of experiencing these celebrations in the Holy City only reinforces their interior dimension and the power of the family and community rites that embody them.
Echoing this sentiment, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa, has called on Catholics to focus on intimate celebrations. As he wrote last Sunday: ‘We therefore wish to make up for these restrictions with moments of prayer within our families and religious communities.’
Passover and Passover continue to remind us that we are all, fundamentally, passers-by, pilgrims. Whether we read the Torah or the Gospel, we celebrate the same audacity: the belief that the night does not have the final word.
That chains can fall, the Red Sea can open, and the tomb can be found empty. It is this obstinate hope - forged in the trial of the desert, the joy of the ascent, and the resilience of the crossing - that constitutes our most precious heritage, even more so in these troubled times.
