In the afternoon of Maundy Thursday, the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land celebrated the in Coena Domini Mass in the hall of the Cenacle, just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
“Here we can experience the love that goes as far as the gift of the self, and here we received the call to love as Jesus loved us,” is how the Custos of the Holy Land, Fra Francesco Patton, started his homily (the full text is here).
The Cenacle, the “room on the upper floor” on Mount Zion, is where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples. It was in the same place that Jesus washed the feet and, after the resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost.
“Here,” the Custos continued in his homily, “we also received the gift of what makes us capable of loving: the Eucharist. Jesus then asked us to “do this in his memory,” to pass on this gift, in our turn, from one generation to the next, until it has transformed the whole of humanity.”
During the celebration, the Custos of the Holy Land recalled Jesus’s gesture of washing the feet of his apostles, repeating it symbolically on six students and six teachers from the Terra Santa School of Jerusalem, as a concrete sign of love and service.
"During the Last Supper,” the Custos concluded, “Jesus does not propose the heroic martyrdom of blood, but the working one of reciprocal service.”
When the celebration at the Cenacle was over, the Franciscans continued their peregrination with a visit to the church of St James of the Armenians and to that of the Holy Archangels, to renew the memory of the hospitality received in those places in the 16th century. After this moment of homage, the friars went to the Syriac Orthodox church of St Mark, which the Syriac tradition identifies with the old home of Mary, the mother of Mark the evangelist, and the place where the Last Supper is believed to have been held.
Lucia Borgato
