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The Bread of Affliction: A Meditation on What Jesus Endured at the Last Supper By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe Last Supper is, strangely, a sad study in the kind of affliction the Lord had to endure from His own disciples. Of all the meals the Lord must have shared with them, this was the one that should have gone beautifully and perfectly; it did not. From one moment to the next the blows just got worse. There were inept responses, distractions, bullheaded debates, and rebukes directed against Jesus … and then of course betrayal. It was nothing short of a disaster. The...

Just in time for Easter, from The New York Daily News: Two historians claim the search for the Holy Grail is over.The famous cup used by Jesus Christ during the Last Supper was identified in a book written by Margarita Torres Jose Manuel Ortega del Rio, titled “Kings of the Grail” and published last week, as the jewel-encrusted goblet on display at the San Isidro Basilica in the northwestern Spanish city of Leon.News of the discovery caused masses of people to flock to the historic church to view the precious chalice – forcing the operators of the museum to pull...

Spanish historians claim they’ve discovered the 2,000-year-old Holy Chalice, the biblical cup that Jesus Christ used during the Last Supper. Margarita Torres, a medieval history lecturer at León University and Jose Ortiza del Rio, an art historian, penned a new book claiming that years of research has led them to conclude that Christ’s chalice is somehow inside a medieval goblet that has been on display in Spain for 1,000 years, Daily Mail reported. Residing inside the Basilica of San Isidoro, a church in Spain that is located on the site of an ancient Roman temple, the goblet — known as...

Spanish historians say they have discovered what Monty Python could not – the Holy Grail, the legendary cup Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper. The Spaniards – Margarita Torres and José Ortega del Río – believe the 2,000-year-old vessel is in a church in León in northern Spain. The pair spent three years studying the history of the chalice and last week published a book, “The Kings of the Grail,” making their case. The onyx chalice, they explained, was concealed within another antique vessel known as the Chalice of Doña Urruca, which is located in León’s basilica of...

Universite de Montreal researchers decode food served in legendary painting Montreal, March 30, 2010 – The Last Supper – relentlessly studied, scrutinized, satirized and one the world's most famous paintings – is still revealing secrets. Researchers Olivier Bauer, Nancy Labonté, Jonas Saint-Martin and Sébastien Fillion of the Université de Montréal Faculty of Theology have found new meaning to the food depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci's famous artwork. "We asked ourselves why Da Vinci chose those particular foods, because they don't correspond to what the Evangelists described," says Bauer. "Why bread, fish, salt, citrus and wine? Why is the saltshaker tipped...

A new high-resolution picture of Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper has been posted online, exposing the artist's finest brush strokes to conspiracy theorists across the internet. The Last Supper The high resolution image allows viewers to see the finer details of the masterpiece. At 16 billion pixels, the image is 1,600 times stronger than those produced by a typical 10 million pixel digital camera.

Hubby and I just had the privilege of viewing Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" in the Basilica of S. Mariua Delle Gazie (Milan, Italy). Even the best photographs of this masterpiece don't capture all the details. Question: There appears to be the image of a face in the folds of St. Barthomew's robe, to the lower left of his hand. He is the leftmost figure in the painting. St. Bartholmew was skinned alived and crucified upside down in the 8th century. The image in Da Vinci's painting is similar to St. Bartholomew as painted by Michelangelo in "The Last Judgement"--the...

A new novel, based "90 per cent on historical facts", depicts Leonardo Da Vinci as a heretic who painted his own face into The Last Supper, and claims that the painting portrays Saint Peter as a traitor and carries a blasphemous message. The Secret Supper, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in Europe, is set to rival The Da Vinci Code for conspiracy theories about one of the most famous figures in art history. The novel portrays Da Vinci as a Cathar, a member of a gnostic sect outlawed by the Roman Catholic Church. The story, which is being...

LITTLETON, Colorado, NOV. 28, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The story of the Holy Grail has spawned numerous works of fiction and fantasy, including popular films. The truth about the actual whereabouts of the cup is less clear. One scholar, Janice Bennett, author of "St. Laurence and the Holy Grail" (Ignatius), believes that the cup's history can be traced from St. Peter's journey to Rome, to St. Laurence in the third century, and then to its final resting place in Spain. Bennett holds a master's in Spanish literature from the University of Colorado, and a certificate in Advanced Bible Studies from the Catholic...

Despite the many indignities a night spent in a jail cell with a group of lefty protesters can visit upon a political writer, it is good for a couple things. First, it helps keep one's thumb on the pulse of the legion of Chomsky-fed college students, the young, restless, and bored who Democrats seem so intent on getting out to the polls this fall. Of course, these folks will never actually vote, but they make for colorful copy. Secondly, professional protesters, perhaps due to a lack of employment, give great movie recommendations. Take for example, The Last Supper, a quaint...