Wherever you go, the experience is usually the same.
You enter a church or a cathedral, and an ecclesiastical hush descends. You admire the architecture, the artworks, the centuries of history and of faith that have stood the test of time.
And then you enter a special chapel or museum, where the holiest of items resides. Behind a glass case stands the stuff of legend: the Holy Grail.
Or is it? What makes this cup the Holy Grail – but not another?
In Europe alone, there are said to be around 200 cups, each thought to be the Holy Grail – the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.
Believers flock to see them and pray over them. But which is the real grail – and does it even exist?
One thing’s for certain – the Holy Grail is embedded deep into our collective imagination. The idea of a quest is a constant theme in literature, art and movies, while we routinely refer to what would be our ultimate goals – but usually lie tantalizingly out of sight – as the “holy grail.” Major medical breakthroughs are often called the “holy grail” for the disease in question.
It’s part of pop culture, too. Dan Brown made millions off his interpretation of the Holy Grail in the “Da Vinci Code,” in which he posited that the grail was not in fact an object, but a secret – that Jesus Christ had fathered children with Mary Magdalen. And who can forget Harrison Ford reaching out for the “cup of a carpenter” in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”?
Even stories that have nothing to do with Christianity are often centered around quests – from Harry Potter to “Lord of the Rings.”
Strip away those modern connotations, though, and we’re left with a simple explanation. The Holy Grail is, supposedly, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper.
The goblet that Christ drunk from before his arrest, sentencing and crucifixion would of course be of interest to Christians around the world. And the fact that, over the centuries, legends have arisen of “grails” producing miracles, has only added to the enthusiasm.
There’s just one problem, says Joanne Pierce, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
“I honestly do not think that the actual cup from the Last Supper still exists,” she says.
“Jesus certainly used a cup at the Last Supper, but if you look at some Gospel accounts, the room was already prepared by someone else [before they arrived]. So it may not have been his cup.”
For Pierce, a Catholic, the idea of the Holy Grail is more symbolic than realistic – in her words, “a cultural reality rather than a religious reality.”
But for many people, the grail is a real object – and one that it’s possible to see if you go to Valencia. Or Léon. Or Genoa. Or any of the many places where, tradition says the Grail resides.
You might even be able to feel the mystical power of the Grail if you visit one of the many places it is said to be hiding, just out of site. Up the mountain of Montserrat, outside Barcelona, for example. Or in the Polish countryside, where the shadowy Knights Templar might have hidden it. Or around Glastonbury Tor, the mysterious hill in southern England where, medieval legend declared, Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail shortly after Jesus’ death.
At Valencia, in eastern Spain, enter the cathedral, and to the right is a chapel, built expressly to house the “Santo Cáliz,” or “holy chalice.”
“Tradition reveals that it is the same cup that the Lord used at the Last Supper for the institution of the Eucharist,” says the cathedral’s website about the “Holy Chalice of the Lord’s Supper.”
They believe that St. Peter took it to Rome, from where it was sent to Spain in the third century CE.Valencia’s tourist board website also describes the cup as “the Holy Chalice… used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.” Announcing that you have the Holy Grail is, of course, a tourism draw. It has been since the medieval period, when Europeans taking part in the Crusades would bring back “relics” from Jerusalem.
In fact, relics have been central to Christianity since the start, says Pierce.
When early Christians were martyred, other believers would pray at their graves. “The martyr acted as a patron or intercessory for their prayers to be lifted up to heaven” – a practice taken from ancient Rome, where the “patronage system was an important part of society.” That idea of saints intensifying prayer, or flagging it to the right place, persists in Christianity today.
But it wasn’t just the graves of martyrs that became holy; it was anything to do with their body, or things they had touched. “Objects they might have handled were considered to have that same grace – a connection with the holy,” says Pierce.
Of course, the cup held by Jesus with which he showed the disciples how to perform the eucharist, on the table as he announced that he was soon to be betrayed, would be the holiest of holy objects.
Little wonder that so much effort has gone into finding the Grail.
During the time of the Crusades, interest in Jesus’ life on Earth increased, says Pierce. People were “going back and forth” between Europe and the Holy Land, looking for artifacts that could have been related. That’s why most of the supposed Holy Grails around Europe first arrived on the continent during those centuries.“It’s similar to the interest in the paranormal we have now,” says Mathew Schmalz, founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and professor of religious studies at Holy Cross.
SOURCE: THE CNN NEWS