This work by Grão Vasco echoes the text by Mother Jeanne Corneau, Superior General of the Congregation from 1938 to 1955. The apostles, men and women, find themselves in the structured architecture of the Upper Room. They are surprised by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, even though they are one around Mary, the mother of Jesus. We see them immersed in prayer and the study of the Word, in a spiritual retreat.
Altarpiece by Vasco Fernandes, known as “Grão Vasco,” Pentecost, oil on wood, 166,5x165 cm, 1534, Monastery of the Holy Cross, Coïmbre (©Wikimedia Commons)
The very mysteries which we are called upon to honour and to continue in the Church, the “mysteries accomplished in the Cenacle” (General Plan 3[1]), make this blessed place the place of love where “Jesus left the last will and testament of His Heart, the Eucharist, His Mother and charity” (Msgr. Ratti[2]).
In the Cenacle took place the institution of the Eucharist — “He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1) — and of the priesthood; in other words, the Sacrament of love and its means of perpetuation, the Mass.
In the Cenacle was given the “new commandment,” the commandment that we should love one another
as Christ has loved us:
– “new” because the spirit of the New Law is love;
– “new” because faith shows us who it is that we love in our neighbour — God Himself (see Luke 10);
– “new” because the limits of our love should be the limits of divine love — the breadth, and length and height and depth of the Heart of Christ (see Eph. 3:18-19).
c) In the Cenacle was offered the sacerdotal prayer “that they may be one!” (John 17:21).
d) In the Cenacle were realized the promise, the expectation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the substantial Love of the Father and the Son, upon the Apostles and disciples gathered in the Upper Room that “hearth” from which love was to radiate to the ends of the earth.
e) In the Cenacle took place the first retreat with the Most Blessed Virgin, Mother of fair love,[3]
Mother of the whole Christ, keeping in her Immaculate Heart the words of the Word of Life, and watching over the newborn Church, nursing it, and keeping it “of one mind” and “one” in her prayer and her love. (See Acts of the Apostles, 1.) And the words of our Lord Himself sum up, in the mystery of the Cenacle, the action of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity: “I send the Promise of My Father upon you”.[1].
[1] Luke 24:49.
In the Cenacle everything is for love, through love and in love; the Cenacle may be likened to an oasis watered by the seven fountains of the Sacraments, sources of grace and fruitfulness for the Church “even to the consummation of the world.”(Matt. 28:20).
We must say again and again, that this mystery of the Cenacle is one of the deepest and richest, and nevertheless, just because of its mysterious character, one of the least explored. It is our own mystery, the call to intimacy and “familiarity with God” (R. Prof. 4).
.
.
Sr. Jeanne Corneau r.c.
Letter on Charity from the Very Reverend Mother Jeanne Corneau to the Sisters of the Congregation, 1946-1947 (L. Ord. in English p. 253-254).