held and bound by the
Jews, He hallowed the opening of His own immolation--that is, of His
Passion."

But the words (John 13:1) "Before the festival day of the Pasch" are
to be understood to refer to the fourteenth day of the moon, which
then fell upon the Thursday: for the fifteenth day of the moon was
the most solemn day of the Pasch with the Jews: and so the same day
which John calls "before the festival day of the Pasch," on account
of the natural distinction of days, Matthew calls the first day of
the unleavened bread, because, according to the rite of the Jewish
festivity, the solemnity began from the evening of the preceding day.
When it is said, then, that they were going to eat the Pasch on the
fifteenth day of the month, it is to be understood that the Pasch
there is not called the Paschal lamb, which was sacrificed on the
fourteenth day, but the Paschal food--that is, the unleavened
bread--which had to be eaten by the clean. Hence Chrysostom in the
same passage gives another explanation, that the Pasch can be taken
as meaning the whole feast of the Jews, which lasted seven days.

Reply Obj. 2: As Augustine says (De Consensu Evang. iii): "'It was
about the sixth hour' when the Lord was delivered up by Pilate to be
crucified," as John relates. For it "was not quite the sixth hour,
but about the sixth--that is, it was after the fifth, and when part
of the sixth had been entered upon until the sixth hour was
ended--that the darkness began, when Christ hung upon the cross. It
is understood to have been the third hour when the Jews clamored for
the Lord to be crucified: and it is most clearly shown that they
crucified Him when they clamored out. Therefore, lest anyone might
divert the thought of so great a crime from the Jews to the soldiers,
he says: 'It was the third hour, and they crucified Him,' that they
before all may be found to have crucified Him, who at the third hour
clamored for His crucifixion. Although there are not wanting some
persons who wish the Parasceve to be understood as the third hour,
which John recalls, saying: 'It was the Parasceve, about the sixth
hour.' For 'Parasceve' is interpreted 'preparation.' But the true
Pasch, which was celebrated in the Lord's Passion, began to be
prepared from the ninth hour of the night--namely, when the chief
priests said: 'He is deserving of death.'" According to John, then,
"the sixth hour of the Parasceve" lasts from that hour of the night
down to Chris