The setting of today’s Gospel is the Last Supper, Earlier, Jesus had predicted that He would be betrayed; Judas had gone out, ultimately to betray Him, and “night had fallen.” Now the “hour has come,” and Jesus prays what is often known as His “priestly prayer.” He prays that the Father may glorify Him and that He may glorify the Father. The “hour of glorification” is that of His crucufixion, death and resurrection, by which He brings about the salvation of the world. Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father, having by His own life on earth revealed the meaning of eternal life and the love of the Father, prays that the Father will glorify Him in His disciples, that is, the Church; it is a prayer that foretells the gift of the Spirit.
Jesus’ prediction that one of His disciples would betray Him is the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper. The artist captures the vibrancy of the disciples’ emotions and reactions so wonderfully that he seems to present in reality the drama of the scene, though it is the product of his imagination. The upper room appears as an extension of the Dominican refectory in Milan where the painting is located. Originally, the tapestries in the picture would have reproduced 15th century Italian embroidery, painted in exquisite deatil. Another master painter, Veronese, transforms the Last Suppe into a sumptous Venetian banquet where, gathered with Jesus and the disciples, are a jester with a parrot, dwarfs and dogs. In both of these paintings, though, we do not see the Last Supper as it really was – each artist in different ways brings the past into his own time. Sometimes people are said to “live in the past,” which can mean that they have not adjusted to present-day life or cannot free themselves from unhappy memories. Just remembering the past is different, for remembering it helps us to live in and for the present. The people of Israel remembered the dark times when they had been beyond the help of any human power, yet help had come from God. In particular, they remembered the Exodus, their passage from slavery to freedom, and they brought their remembrance into the present with the Passover. At the Last Supper Christ instituted the Eucharist, a new Passover but more than just a remembrance. No artist could portray the reality of the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ; but we experience that reality today.
