The Upper Room’s most precious gifts

One of the most significant and moving moments of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a visit to the Cenacle, or Upper Room, on Mount Sion in Jerusalem, where Christ instituted the most precious gifts of the Eucharist and the Priesthood.

You enter a courtyard. You pass a door on the left where you go up a staircase, which leads to the Cenacle. This Upper Room is 15.30m by 9.40m and is divided into two naves by three columns which support original arches. It is lighted by three 14th century Gothic windows. According to tradition, this is the very same place, a room nowadays completely bare, that the memory of the Institution of the Eucharist and the New Priesthood is venerated.

The bread of life

I stepped into this sacred place reflecting that, to understand what Jesus did, one must understand what Christ promised at Cap harn aum, in the synagogue, for which we can read St John, 6, 48-58:

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that a person may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world…

“In all truth I tell you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on the last day.”

New everlasting covenant

The environment itself of the Upper Room quickly reminds you, with deep emotion, of the Gospel account of the Last Supper, two thousand years before: On the night before his death, Jesus says to his disciples: “This is my Body, which will be given up for you.... This is the cup of my Blood, the Blood of the new and everlasting covenant; it will be shed for you and for all, for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”

During the 23 March 2000 private mass at that very same chapel, Saint John Paul II said these words: “emerge from the depths of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God”.

Since then Jesus’ words during the Last Supper have been repeated, generation after generation, by those who share in the priesthood of Christ through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In this way, Christ himself constantly says these words anew, through the voice of his priests in every corner of the world.

“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” This is the “mystery of faith”, which we proclaim in every celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus Christ, the Priest of the new and eternal Covenant, has redeemed the world by his Blood. Risen from the dead, he has gone to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. In the Spirit who has made us God’s beloved children, in the unity of the Body of Christ, we await his return with joyful hope.

The Eucharist builds the Church

Through the Eucharist, Christ builds up the Church. The hands, which broke bread for the disciples at the Last Supper, were to be stretched out on the Cross in order to gather all people to himself in the eternal Kingdom of his Father. Through the celebration of the Eucharist, he never ceases to draw men and women to be effective members of his Body.

Sharing in the Lord’s Supper is always communion with Christ, who offers himself for us in sacrifice to the Father. This is why the Church recommends that the faithful receive communion when they take part in the Eucharist, provided that they are properly disposed and, if aware of grave sin, have received God’s pardon in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

When we receive Holy Communion, and hear the words “The body of Christ”, “The blood of Christ”, our response of faith is “Amen” to the One who is offering and giving himself to us. This “Amen” is, of course, an affirmation of the real presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but it is more than that. Above all, we confess our readiness to enter into all that Christ has achieved for us by his death and resurrection, the gift of salvation made present for us here and now as we celebrate Mass together.

It is here that we come to the heart of our Catholic understanding of the Mass: the celebration of the Eucharist makes sacramentally present the whole mystery of salvation. The Mass is the sacrament of salvation, the memorial of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We say Amen to this truth of faith when we receive Holy Communion. ( Vide Document on the Eucharist in the life of the Church, Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of England & Wales, Ireland and Scotland, 1998).

The Eucharist is not only a particularly intense expression of the reality of the Church’s life, but in a sense is its “fountain head”.

A new commandment

The Eucharist also reminds us that just before the Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room, in a room at ground level, Jesus did another very important and significant thing: He got up from the table, removed his outer garments and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist. He then poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with a towel he was wearing. When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments again he went back to the table. “Do you understand,” he said, “what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash each other’s feet” (Jn 3, 4-5, 12-14).

Jesus then gave his disciples a new commandment, to love one another. “You must love one another just as I have loved you... It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognise you as my disciples.” (Jn 13, 34-45).

In this, one sees a constant reminder that while it is above all at the Eucharist that Christians become one in Christ, sharing together as “one body” the “one bread” of the Lord, the Eucharistic celebration does not stop at the church door: Christians are called to evangelise and bear witness in their daily lives.

Leaving the Upper Room I found myself praying so that all priests continue to grow in the appreciation of the mystery which they celebrate at the altar.