It is as if people once knew the whole secret of Flesh and Blood, but then they forgot; They are looking in the dark, by feeling, and they are about to find them. No, they won't. Unquenchable, unquenchable thirst: they drink water as in a dream; they wake up, and thirst even more insatiably. Tantalus' hunger and thirst – this is the torment of all the ancient mysteries of flesh and blood, and especially of the Dionysian ones, who are closest to Christ.

The future Dionysus, the Bacchus of the Eleusinian mysteries, is not yet a body, not an image, but only a shadow, a sound, a cry in the silence of the night (Jakchos – from iakcho, "cry", "call"); The cry and call of all pre-Christian humanity: "I hunger, I thirst! I hunger for Thy flesh, I thirst for Thy blood!" [818] It is this hunger, this thirst, that is quenched in the Eucharist.

The eternal action of Christ in world history, eternal, in time, His "Coming-Presence", παρουσία; between the First and Second Comings the connecting thread – this is what the Eucharist is.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. (I Corinthians 11:26).

XXII

I do not leave you orphans; I will come to you (again).

… The world will no longer see Me, but you will. (John 14:18-19).

… In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world. (John 16:33.)

After these words, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven. (John 17:1.)

Since in the Greek language of the Gospels,

, cannot have a figurative meaning: "upwards", but can only have a direct meaning: "to heaven", and since Jesus had not yet come out of the upper room (that He came out will be said later, John 18:1), it means that "lifting His eyes to heaven", He saw above Him the real heaven, and this could only be if in the Upper Room, as in other similar ones, a round window was made in the dome (also depicted on the Maddabi map), directly into the sky. Like the bright moon of the Easter full moon, the illuminated, transparent-dark blue, like sapphire, sky seemed neither night nor daytime, but unprecedented, as the moonlit sky always seems from a window if the moon itself is not visible. It was as if the bottomlessly clear eye of the Father was looking straight into the eyes of the Son. And in the heavenly breeze brought from above, as if someone's unearthly breath, the lights of the burned-out lamps wavered, like those fiery tongues of Pentecost.

Arise, let us depart from hence" (John 14:31),

Jesus had said this even earlier, and must have gotten up, but he did not go away for a long time; perhaps He lacked the spirit, as often happens in the last moments of parting, to leave those whom "having loved, He loved to the end"; For a long time he spoke to them the last words of love. They must have stood up too; they surrounded Him in a tight circle. Perhaps only now did they understand what it meant: