Today is Holy Thursday, commemorating when Jesus Christ celebrated the Passover with His apostles, established a new covenant with His body and blood as food and sacrifice, and went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the authorities arrested Him. In 2023, I had the incredible opportunity of visiting Jerusalem and seeing many of the places associated with Christ’s Passion, including the Upper Room or Cenacle.
All of the Gospels refer to Christ’s “Last Supper” with his 12 apostles, and multiple Gospels refer to Jesus selecting a particular house where they would eat the Passover Seder, as for instance in Mark 14:13-14, “And he sendeth two of his disciples, and saith to them: Go ye into the city; and there shall meet you a man carrying a pitcher of water, follow him; And whithersoever he shall go in, say to the master of the house, The master saith, Where is my refectory, where I may eat the pasch with my disciples?” And again in Luke 22:11ff: “And you shall say to the goodman of the house: The master saith to thee, Where is the guest chamber, where I may eat the pasch with my disciples? And he will shew you a large dining room, furnished; and there prepare. And they going, found as he had said to them, and made ready the pasch.”
We can visit that very building to this day. Now, the current Upper Room, based on archaeology, is probably a rebuilt and modified room, one changed over the years by Christians and later by Muslims, but the building itself, from the foundations up, is still the same building that Christ selected for that critical last meal. Unfortunately, Muslims long ago stripped away the Christian adornments that were there in ancient times, but the room has been reconsecrated for Christian prayer and liturgy.
Even the building is an ongoing witness to the union of both the Old and New Testaments. In the basement is the tomb of David, controlled of course by orthodox Jews, who piously guard the remains of the most honored king of Israel. On the upper story is the Cenacle, where the son of David, the Messiah, celebrated Passover and later visited His apostles to confirm He was indeed risen from the dead. As the Upper Room is built over the tomb of David, so Christianity is founded upon and built over Judaism. I wish more Christians would remember that. As Christ said in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”
Visiting both David’s tomb and the Upper Room was a profoundly spiritual experience. I’ve been to churches and holy places in multiple countries, but there is, of course, something radically different and unsurpassable about the Holy Land. To stand where Jesus and Mary and the apostles and prophets stood, to be in the buildings they were in, to touch the same walls and admire the same gardens and hills, is a life-changing experience. Like Christ, one can walk from the Upper Room to Gethsemane, where some of the olive trees are two millennia old, dating to Jesus’s time, and then back again to Jerusalem and through the Old City on the Via Dolorosa to the church built over Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher.
In the Upper Room, 2023. Have a blessed Holy Thursday pic.twitter.com/TgavQDE69X
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) April 18, 2025
Every time I read the Gospels on my own or hear them at Mass, the stories come alive so vividly. I feel as if I witnessed them with my own eyes. The Cenacle is rich in so many important events at the close of Christ’s earthly life. It is where He had the Passover just before His death, where He transformed the bread and wine traditional to the Jewish Seder into His body and blood (Luke 22:19-20, John 6, Mark 14:22-24, Matthew 26:26-28, 1 Corinthians 11:23ff). But that same room is also tied to the Easter story.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, 2023. Have a blessed Holy Thursday pic.twitter.com/Xro6kCdfD7
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) April 2, 2026
It is traditionally believed that the apostles hid in the Upper Room in fear after Christ was crucified, and that it was there Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection (Luke 24:33ff, John 20:19ff). Likewise, from ancient times, Christians have placed the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and Mary at Pentecost in the Upper Room. Peter would therefore have given his first sermon, the one in Acts 2, from or near that building.
Hence, the Upper Room is steeped in the miracle of the God-man’s redemptive death and resurrection more than any other structure besides the Holy Sepulcher. It was a great blessing for me to visit Jerusalem, and I pray that soon the terrorist Iranian regime targeting the holy sites will fall, and Christians can once again travel to those holy sites in Jerusalem and literally follow in Jesus’s footsteps.
