St. Lawrence and the Chalice of Our Lord

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr.

As a deacon of the Church of Rome, Lawrence was entrusted with the material treasures of the Church. According to the well-documented research presented by Janice Bennett in St. Laurence and the Holy Grail, among those treasures was the chalice believed to have been used by Our Lord at the Last Supper—the First Mass in the Upper Room.

Before his martyrdom in the year 258, Lawrence entrusted the chalice to a fellow Spaniard, who took it to Spain for safekeeping. After a remarkable journey through history, it eventually came to Valencia, where it remains today.

The chalice had been preserved by the Church of Rome and, according to this tradition, used by the early Popes until the time of Pope St. Sixtus II. In our own time, both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass using this ancient chalice.

But there is another fascinating connection.

Listen to the words of the ancient Roman Canon at the consecration of the Precious Blood:

“In like manner, after He had supped, taking also this glorious chalice into His holy and venerable hands…”

The Latin says:

Accipiens et hunc praeclarum calicem…

Hunc calicem — “this chalice.”

Not simply a chalice.

THIS chalice.

The Roman Canon comes to us from the ancient Church of Rome—the very Church in which this chalice was preserved and used. Could those words preserve the memory of the very chalice possessed by the early Roman Church—the chalice that Our Lord Himself held in His hands in the Upper Room?

What a remarkable connection:

From Our Lord in the Upper Room, to St. Peter and his successors, to Pope St. Sixtus II, to St. Lawrence, and through him to Spain and eventually Valencia.

Nearly two thousand years later, the chalice remains a remarkable and tangible witness to the continuity of the Catholic Faith: the same Eucharistic Sacrifice, the same Apostolic succession, and the same Church stretching back to Jesus Christ and the Upper Room.

Thank you, St. Lawrence, for preserving this sacred treasure and handing it on to future generations.

St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr, pray for us.