And thus shall you eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD'S passover.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
The just man gives an added force to his vow by acting quickly. Accordingly our fathers ate the paschal lamb in haste, girding up their reins, and with shoes on their feet, and standing ready, equipped for departure. The pasch is the passage of the Lord from passion to the exercise of virtue. It is called the pasch of the Lord because the truth of the passion of the Lord was then indicated in the type of the lamb, and its benefits are now being observed. .
[The father of the prodigal son] orders the shoes to be brought out, for he who is about to celebrate the Lord’s Passover, about to feast on the Lamb, ought to have his feet protected against all attacks of spiritual wild beasts and the bite of the serpent. .
[The word] pascha is not, as some think, a Greek word, but a Hebrew one; yet most conveniently there occurs in this name a certain congruity between the two languages. Because in Greek [the word for] “to suffer” is paschein. For this reason “pascha” has been thought of as a passion, as though this name has been derived from [a Greek word for] “suffering.” But in its own language, that is, in Hebrew, “pascha” means “a passing over.” For this reason the people of God celebrated the pascha for the first time when, fleeing from Egypt, they “passed over” the Red Sea. So now that prophetic figure has been fulfilled in truth when Christ is led as a sheep to the slaughter. By his blood, after our doorposts have been smeared [with it], that is, by the sign of his cross, after our foreheads have been marked [with it], we are freed from the ruin of this world as though from the captivity or destruction in Egypt. And we effect a most salutary passing over when we pass over from the devil to Christ...
Passover means “passing over.” It derives its ancient name from the Lord’s passing over on this [day] through Egypt, striking the firstborn of the Egyptians and freeing the children of Israel, and from the children of Israel’s passing over on that night from their slavery in Egypt in order that they might come to the land which had once been promised to their heirs as a land of peace. Mystically it signifies that on this [day] our Lord would pass over from this world to his Father. Following his example, the faithful, having cast off temporal desires and having cast off their slavery to vices by their continual practice of the virtues, should pass over to their promised heavenly fatherland.
And let us know that the law also of the most wise Moses is found to have commanded something of this kind to the Israelites. For a lamb was sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month, as a type of Christ. For our Passover, Christ is sacrificed, according to the testimony of most sacred Paul. The hierophant Moses, then, or rather God by his means, commanded them, when eating its flesh, saying, “Let your loins be girt, and your shoes on your feet, and your staves in your hands.” For I affirm that it is the duty of those who are partakers of Christ to beware of a barren indolence. Yet it is a further duty not to have as it were their loins ungirt and loose but to be ready cheerfully to undertake whatever labors become the saints; and to hasten besides with alacrity wherever the law of God leads them. And for this reason he very appropriately made them wear the garb of travelers [at the Passover].
Haste, as all the aforesaid prescriptions intimate. (Menochius)
Many of them regarded only this occasion, and were not required afterwards.
Phase, which the Chaldee writes Pascha, signifies the passing over (Calmet) of the destroying angel, when he spared those houses only which were marked with blood, to insinuate the necessity of faith in Christ's death. Some have derived the word from the Greek Pascho, "to suffer "on account of the similarity of sound. (Haydock)
