Section 150d
Predictmn of joy over his resurrection
Jerusalem, in the upper room → The Mount of Olives
John 16:16-22
16“In a little while you will not see me; and again after a little while, you will see me, for I am going to the Father.” 17Then some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying to us, ‘In a little while you are not going to see me; and again after a little while, you will see me,’ and, ‘For I am going to the Father’?” 18So they kept saying, “What does he mean by saying, ‘A little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” 19Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while, you will not see me; and again after a little while, you will see me’? 20Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. 21When a woman is giving birth, she has pain because her hour has come, but when her baby is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. 22So you also have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.
Notes
Mount of Olives
The mountainous ridge called the Mount of Olives stretches totay from the Hebrew University Mount Scopus campus in the north to the Jewish cemetery and beyond, to the village of Silwan in the south. Between these two ends of the mountain are the olive trees from which the mountain takes its name. The area at the bottom of the mountain would have been the place for the olive gardens and an olive press, “Gat shemen” in Hebrew, from which the name “Gethsemane” comes.
The gospels record on more than one occasion Jesus’ sorrow for Jerusalem as he made his way down the slopes of the Mount of Olives. It was a path he would have known from childhood from His many visits to Jerusalem.
Down the road from Bethphage He came riding on a donkey colt with palm branches symbolic of Judaea strewn along the way. “Hosanna!” (“save now!”) was the cry upon the lips of the people (Matthew 21:1-9). This prayer from Psalm 118:25 was a request for salvation. Yet Jesus knew that these cries would be changed within a week to “Crucify him!” He wept again for Jerusalem, for He knew what would befall the people in less than one generation as the city would be besieged and taken.
Upper Room
The Upper room, or Cenacle, commemorates the place where the last Supper was eaten and Holy Communion was instituted. The Gospels tell us nothing of the location of the house, but there is good indication it would have been on the western hill where a wealthy man would have had an upper room on his house. Archaeological excavations in the Jewish quarter show that there were large houses in this area during the time of Christ.
There is a possibility that this is indeed the correct location of the Upper Room. A church was built on this site soon after the death of Jesus. It must have survived the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Bishop Epiphanius wrote of how Emperor Hadrian made an inspection tour of Jerusalem in 130 A.D. and found “everything razed except for a few houses and a certain small church of the Christians which stood on Mount Zion in the place where the disciples returned after the ascension”. This church was destroyed and rebuilt many times over the following centuries before being handed over to the Franciscans who restored the room giving it its present Gothic appearance (14th century).