The Master to Dinner

Holy Thursday. The Apostles arguing over their places at the table. The feet are washed, the betrayal revealed. The sacrifice of Christ: not a symbolic gesture. From that moment, for Christians, nothing would ever be the same again

BY ALESSANDRO ZANGRANDO

The house belonged to the same young man who would later run away nude from the guards at Gethsemane, leaving in their hands the cloth he had wrapped around himself. That young man was Mark; Jesus stayed in his house whenever He came to Jerusalem. The house was in the southwest part of the upper town, and it was the month of Nisan (from mid-March to mid-April). Passover fell during this period, on the 14th of the month, and the Master, too, was preparing to “eat Passover.” This would be the Last Supper, during which He would institute the Eucharist. Abbot Ricciotti (The Life of Jesus Christ) reconstructs the rite of Passover in minute detail. Following the custom, the Passover lamb was roasted in the houses after sundown. The participants, no fewer than ten, would all sit along the same side of the table, a custom maintained also by the early Christian community, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has recalled recently concerning the orientation of the altar during Mass (“Never during a meal at the beginning of the Christian era did the head of a group dining together sit across the table from the others. They all sat together, or reclined, on the convex side of a Sigma or horseshoe-shaped table” (cf. Ratzinger’s book, Introduzione allo spirito della liturgia [Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy], San Paolo edition). It was prescribed that at least four chalices of ritual wine be passed around. On the table were unleavened bread, a special sauce into which the herbs were dipped, and the roast lamb. Between the passing of one cup and the next, prayers and psalms were recited.
On Holy Thursday, Jesus, too, was preparing to celebrate the rite, and gave instructions to Peter and John: “‘Go and make the preparations for us to eat the Passover.’ They asked him, ‘Where do you want us to prepare it?’ He said to them, ‘Look, as you go into the city you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house he enters and tell the owner of the house, the Master says this to you: Where is the room for me to eat the Passover with my disciples? The man will show you a large upper room furnished with couches. Make the preparations there.’ They set off and found everything as he had told them and prepared the Passover” (Lk 22:8-13). This man was a relative–perhaps even the father–of Mark.

The spark setting off the argument
At the beginning of the meal, the apostles argued among themselves about their place at the table. Some of them grumbled because they wanted a more important position, as Luke recounts (22:24): “An argument also began among them about who should be reckoned the greatest.” Abbot Ricciotti suggests, following a clue in the Gospel of St. John, that the spark of the argument was set off by Judas, the betrayer, who tried to sit as close to Jesus as possible in order to hide his betrayal. The Master admonished them to a more humble attitude, but to no avail, as their spat continued. So He got up from the table, took off His clothes, took up a cloth, tied it around His waist, and started washing the feet of everyone at the table, a task usually reserved for the lowest-ranking slaves. Seeing this scene, the apostles were struck dumb, and accepted the washing of their feet as a lesson in humility. Only Peter spoke, but Jesus told him, “No one who has had a bath needs washing, such a person is clean all over. You too are clean, though not all of you are” (Jn 13:10), referring to Judas’ betrayal.
The dinner continued, the diners returning to their places. Jesus was almost certainly seated at the head of the semicircle formed by the table, and the argument among the apostles was set off because they all wanted to sit near Him. The couches were arranged along the outside of the semicircle and the disciples reclined, resting on their left elbow. The ones closest to the Son of God were Peter, John, and Judas Iscariot. The scene of the Last Supper that takes concrete shape in our eyes is this: behind Jesus was Peter (in second place in the hierarchy of honor, as Abbot Ricciotti explains), opposite, and thus in front of the Master, was John, and right next to him was Judas Iscariot.

The bread dipped in the dish
The apostles were worried and thought over the words they had just heard: what did it mean that not all of them were clean? Jesus returned to the subject, “One of you is about to betray me, one of you eating with me” (Mk 14:18). Great consternation among the people at the table followed. One after another they asked, “Not me, surely?” John, the beloved disciple, the one who could lean on Jesus’ breast, also wanted to know more. The betrayer was close by, lying next to the One to be betrayed. At Eastern meals, it was considered a gesture of kindness to break off a piece of bread, dip it into the common platter, thus preparing a bite to eat, and offer it to another person at the table. Jesus then answered John, “‘It is the one to whom I give the piece of bread that I dip in the dish.’ And when He had dipped the piece of bread He gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot” (Jn 13:26). Judas couldn’t stand it any more. He realized that he could no longer hide his betrayal, and the Master was relentless: “‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ None of the others at the table understood why He said this. Since Judas had charge of the common fund, some of them thought Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the festival,’ or telling him to give something to the poor” (Jn 13:27-29). Judas then took the piece of bread, went out of Mark’s house, and was swallowed up in the night, the night that had descended also on his soul.
The meal continued, approaching its end. At a certain point, Jesus did something unexpected. “Then he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ He did the same with the cup after supper, and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you’” (Lk 22:19-20). This was the institution of the Eucharist. For Christians, nothing would ever be the same again. In the Holy Mass this event is repeated, that of the Savior’s sacrifice. Not a symbolic gesture, but the bread is Body and the wine is Blood.
The dinner drew to a close with the recitation of the second part of the Hallel, the hymn made up of the Hebrew Psalms, and the passing of the fourth cup. The group remained in the room to talk some more, and the surprises were not over for the disciples. Other revelations were still to come: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away from me tonight, for the Scripture says: I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered, but after my resurrection I shall go ahead of you to Galilee.’ At this Peter said to Him, ‘Even if all fall away from you, I will never fall away.’ Jesus answered him, ‘In truth I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have betrayed me three times.’ Peter said to Him, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never betray you’” (Mt 26:31-35). Peter, the impetuous, could not accept this prediction–he was agitated, and assured Jesus that he would never betray his Master. The other disciples repeated the same thing. Jesus did not seem to have much confidence in the solidity of their principles, and told them to be prepared to fight. So the disciples took up two swords, which may have been in the room by chance, declaring that they were ready to fight. But Jesus told them, “That is enough.”

The consoler
Only John’s Gospel reports other conversations. “They will never be able to be classified or summarized, either in literary or conceptual terms,” the Abbot Ricciotti writes. “They are an impetuous eruption of feelings that is not contained or directed by any norms, but pours down as though flowing from a volcano of love. The incandescent lava moves forward now slowly, now in a cascade, flooding hillocks and ravines and, sweeping everything in its path, transforms every area into a burning lake.” What does Jesus say? He speaks of the Spirit: “If you love me you will keep my commandments. I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth whom the world can never accept since it neither sees nor knows him” (Jn 14:15-17). He talks about the fruit of the vine, saying, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are clean already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you” (Jn 15:1-3). He talks of love: “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:12-13). “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because my choice of you has drawn you out of the world, that is why the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). And He speaks of His coming farewell: “It is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will show the world how wrong it was, about sin, and about who was in the right, and about judgment” (Jn 16:7-8).
Jesus and the apostles went out of the house, and reached, on the other side of the stream called Kidron, in the area of the Mount of Olives, the garden where they often gathered. The name of the garden was Gethsemane. The time of his betrayal had come, and his Passion was drawing near.