March 24 Maundy Thursday

From the Upper Room

John's Gospel is clear that the Last Supper was not on the first eve of Passover, but rather the evening before. As retired Pope Benedict XVI makes clear in Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2, "Holy Week," Jesus modeled His Last Super on the Passover, but instituted something new in fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:31-34 ("Behold I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel.") See the work of Jewish historian at Boston College, Jonathan Klawans:

Regarding the place of the Lord's Supper, here is an except from my book, An Illustrated Guide to the Holy Land for Tour Groups, Students, and Pilgrims:

The Cenacle (“Upper Room”) and the “Tomb of David”
Both these structures, which themselves are not ancient, sit above the foundation of a building dating back to Roman times, second century CE or earlier. Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403) says the “little church of God” stood here in 130 CE, which church, because of heavy Roman persecution of Christianity, could not have been built in the second century and so must date to the first, probably to the origins of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The first house church (domus ecclesia) of Jerusalem was “the room upstairs” of Acts 1:13 where the disciples gathered regularly with Mary the mother of Jesus after the Ascension, where they chose Matthias to replace Judas, and where we can assume they were gathered “all together in one place” on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1; attested by Cyril of Jerusalem, before 348). Acts 2:43-47 describes the life and growth of this nascent church which, this being the affluent part of Jerusalem at the time, evidently met in the house of a wealthy and generous early Christian, possibly even John Mark (Acts 12:12). It does not take much imagination to connect this room upstairs with the guest room, “a large room upstairs,” where Mark says Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper (14:14-15). In the fourth century it was known as “the Upper Church of the Apostles” and in the fifth as “Zion, Mother of all the Churches,” which is pictured prominently in the Madaba Map.
David was buried in the City of David (1 Kgs 2:10) where archaeologists have discovered what was probably the royal necropolis (see “City of David”). But Byzantine piety enjoyed venerating at the Church of Zion both David, the Israelite founder of Jerusalem, and St. James, the founder of the Jerusalem church. So traditions developed that David was buried here and James just inside the modern Zion Gate at the Armenian cathedral (same hill, the current wall is an artificial divide). You may reach “the Cenacle/David’s Tomb” by exiting Zion Gate or driving to the parking lot outside it. Walk toward the imposing Dormition Abby taking the left path at the Y. Walk straight through the passageway and keep to the left until the courtyard of the fourteenth-century Franciscan monastery to enter “David’s Tomb.” The cenotaph is Crusader but the niche behind it was probably a receptacle in the apse of the Byzantine Church of Mount Zion. Exit the passageway through which you entered to get back to the street and turn right though a doorway to enter the Cenacle. While remnants may be Crusader, the present reconstruction is fourteenth-century Gothic from the Franciscan monastery built in 1335. Most interesting is the pillar in the corner with the Christian symbol of a mother pelican who willingly sacrifices the flesh of her breast for her hungry chicks. Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Turks dispelled the Christians and turned the room into a mosque venerating “the Prophet David,” to which the mihrab in the direction of Mecca and the Arabic prohibiting public prayer are witnesses. The spot came under Israeli control in 1948 and is now open to all (the Cenacle closes at 1 on Fridays) but has become a center for yeshiva study. It is also one of the churches’ evening worship during the Week for Christian Unity during which the side chapel is opened for all nations to pray the Lord’s Prayer in their own languages, a moving modern experience of Pentecost.