nurturing the mystical body

8/3/2019 Nurturing the Mystical Body

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NURTURING THE MYSTICAL BODY:

REFLECTIONS ON THE FEAST OF THE CENACLE

byRose Hoover, rc

After the Ascension and before Pentecost, there is another mystery worthy of honor, but

which most of us just pass right over on our way to Pentecost. The Sisters of the

Cenacle, however, don’t let it go unnoticed, because it is called the Mystery of the

Cenacle and is celebrated as the Feast of Our Lady of the Cenacle. But it is not a mystery

just for the Cenacle Sisters. It is a mystery important for the whole Church, because it

prepares for the birth of the Church at Pentecost.

The feast day of Our Lady of the Cenacle — for Mary was there — is the Saturday after

Ascension Thursday.

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet,

which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away; and when

they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they

were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and

Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus

and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.

All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together

with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his

brothers.

(Acts 1:12-14 RSV)

The word Cenacle comes from the Latin word coenaculum , which means the supper

room (or in this case the upper room). Now tradition tells us that this cenacle was the

same place where Jesus celebrated the last supper with his apostles and the same place

where his friends and family were gathered when the Holy Spirit was poured out uponthem at Pentecost.

But what about this in-between feast? What were Mary and the friends of Jesus doing in

the Upper Room – in the Cenacle – after Jesus had ascended into heaven?

Well, we are told that they were praying.



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"Is that all?" we ask.

Most of the other New Testament mysteries are mysteries of presence and of the

breaking forth of something obviously new into the world. That is certainly true about

the Last Supper and Pentecost. But the mystery of the little group gathered in the Upper

Room is, first, an in-between mystery , sandwiched in between more spectacular ones of

which it is a part. And secondly it is a mystery of absence: Jesus has departed from

them. He has been taken into heaven. And third, it is a mystery where nothing much

seems to be happening. What were Jesus’ friends and family doing in the Cenacle?

Why were they gathered there?

As yet they had no ministry, strictly speaking. It is possible that Peter went out to fish

each day and that others went out to work or carried out tasks in the Cenacle itself.After all, the necessities of life didn’t stop, no matter how timid and uncertain the group

was feeling after Jesus had left them. But as far as we know, helping with the work was

not the purpose of their being together. They may have sat around telling stories about

Jesus, and remembering. But the only thing we know for sure is that they were praying

— a useless activity in the pragmatic eyes of the world.

For several years I have been carrying on an e-mail correspondence with an ex-christian

— a former preacher who is now preaching fervently against faith. One of his latest

missives claims that there is no evidence for anything spiritual at all. And as for prayer,

he says,

Believers may talk with their god all they want, but he never

responds. And if they say he does, that constitutes a form of

mental illness.

As for answered prayer, it is just an illusion, he writes. He has no concept of prayer as

relationship or communion, just as asking for things — and not getting them. Praying,

he thinks, somehow obliges God to give us what we ask for. When we don’t get it, that

means prayer is a sham and God probably does not exist.

But we Christians can also buy into the idea that prayer is a wasteful way to spend time.

It seems better to be accomplishing something. The sense of absence and lack of

purposeful activity in the Upper Room after the Ascension may be one reason this time

when Jesus’ friends and family are gathered in prayer is so hard to deal with as an event

– or a non-event – and why it seems easier to skip over this mystery and move on to

Pentecost.



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But I propose to you that something absolutely essential for the church and the world

was happening there in the Upper Room. Yes, this is an in-between time: in between the

great mysteries of Cross/Resurrection/Ascension and Pentecost. But all gestation

periods are in-between times.

In the New Testament we have three times when the Body of Christ is prepared and

given. The first, of course, is the Annunciation and Mary’s time of waiting leading up to

the birth of Jesus.

The second takes us to the Cenacle for the Last Supper , followed by the whole of the

Paschal mystery of dying and rising — and then the mystery continued and lived after

the Resurrection when the followers of Jesus met for what they called the “breaking ofthe bread” and what we call Eucharist.

The third is this period of waiting between the Ascension and Pentecost; and once

again, we will see that, even in the post-Ascension absence, it is the Body of Christ that

we are talking about here — even when Jesus seems to be absent to those who love

him…

…Because what we have in the first chapter of Acts is a new Annunciation.

Let us go back for a moment to the Annunciation scene in the first chapter of Luke. It

took me a while to notice the similarities between Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary and

the words of Jesus to his disciples just before the Ascension. Remember that the Gospel

of Luke and the Book of Acts were both written by Luke. Luke is a careful writer, so it is

doubtful that the resemblance is accidental.

In Luke 1, in response to Mary’s question, the angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come

upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…”

In Acts 1, right before the Ascension, in response to the questioning of the apostles, Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…”

In both events we hear that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and there will be an

experience of power. Luke is a careful writer, so this verbal resemblance is important,

because it indicates that what is happening is similar in both cases.



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But there is a difference.

One of the major distinctions between the two annunciations is this: at the time of the

first Annunciation, the word was spoken to one person, Mary; but the promise on the

day of Ascension is made, not to one person, but to the gathered apostles of Jesus. This

time, the Spirit is promised to the community. In both events, the power of the Holy

Spirit will bring about an embodying, an enfleshing: in the first case, the conception of

the infant Jesus; in the second case, the conception of the infant church, the mystical

Body of Christ.

Since this is so, the womb is to be prepared this time, not in the body of Mary, but in the

body of the community. Gathered there, supporting each other, forgiving each other —

and they did have some forgiving to do, didn’t they, for the miserable and cowardlyway most of them had acted after Jesus was arrested? — assembled in the Cenacle, a

hollowing-out is taking place, an emptying, a making room or preparing a womb for

the Spirit of Jesus. (We note that there are paintings of Pentecost in which Mary,

gathered with the others and representing the church and Mother of the Church, is

depicted as pregnant.)

The presence of Mary the Mother of Jesus is indispensable to this little community, for

Mary is the only person in the world who already knows what it is like to be emptied in

such a way as to receive the mystery of Christ within herself.

So is this a time when nothing is happening?

The group gathered in the Upper Room needs this time of prayer where nothing seems

to be taking place. The friends and family of Jesus no longer have his physical presence,

and what they are left with, for better or for worse, is each other. They must receive the

mystery of Christ into themselves; they must be prepared to incarnate the presence of

Christ for each other and for the world. Because of this wondrous process, Paul can later

say:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it”

(1 Corinthians 12:27).

It would seem that not even Pentecost can happen without this strange mystery of

waiting and being with and for each other in the Upper Room. It is only when the

presence of Christ is growing (you notice that I do not say “finished”) and nurtured in



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this little community that they can be entrusted with ministry, because only then can

they be the presence of Christ in the world.

Isn’t our own call similar to theirs?

These first Christians needed each other. They couldn’t go it alone as Christians, and

neither can we. Like them, when we pray, we wait — if not in an actual Cenacle, in the

Cenacle of our hearts — and often we feel as if little or nothing is being accomplished.

However, along with the whole communion of saints, those still living (including the

motley crew of sinners that we are here tonight) and those who have gone before us, we

wait and pray, allowing God to pour out love on us (whether or not we are even aware

of it) and to begin transforming us into the loving presence of Christ for each other and

for the whole world.

. . . . . . . . . .

Copyright © 2008 by Rose Hoover, rc, PhD

Permission is hereby given to print and distribute this essay, as long as the copyright notice and all credits are

included. Specific permission must be requested in order to reprint the essay for profit or for publication in a book or

periodical, or to publish it in its entirety on another website.

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