Christian Mount Sion

The Christian tradition about the authenticity of the sacred site on Sion goes back well beyond the fourth century. It indicates the south-west angle of the western hill of Jerusalem as being the site of the Holy Cenacle, thus the site of the institution of the Blessed Eucharist, the Apparition of the Risen Christ and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.

View on Mount Sion

The upper room of the house, placed at the disposal of the Master by a disciple for the celebration of the last Pesach, became, after the Passion, the refuge and the centre of reunion of the disciples.

Bishop Epiphanius, a native of Palestine (310-403), basing himself on documents of the 2nd century, writes "Hadrian... found the city entirely rased to the ground and the Temple of God destroyed and trampled upon, with the exception of some houses and a certain small church of the Christians, which had been constructed in that place, in which the disciples, after the Saviour was taken up to heaven from the Mount of Olives, betaking themselves, mounted to the Cenacle". The information given by Epiphanius is well founded, for the western quarter was outside the scene of the military operations of 70 AD when the city was attacked from the opposite side. The Christian community that had fled to Pella in 66 AD before the first jewish revolt and the subsequent siege by the Romans, would surely have returned to the centre around which, with the Apostles, the first community had arisen and which preserved, among so many memories, the seat of the first bishop, St. James.

The buildings on Christian Sion

The jewish temple of Sion had passed away but the new Christian Sion had arisen. In the word of the apologists of the time "Est ergo spiritualis Sion ecclesia, in qua a Deo Patre rex constitutus est Christus" (St. Optatus). The Christians saw in the words of Isaiah: "For the law shall come forth from Sion: and the words of the Lord from Jerusalem", an indication of their own church whence "the word of the Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ and his Apostles is spread to all men" (Eusebius). Even the pilgrim Egeria describes the liturgy that was celebrated "in the church on Mount Sion" in memory of Christ's appearance after his resurrection and of Pentecoste. Restored by St. Maximus (331-349) it seems that the church was restored or rebuild by the bishop of Jerusalem John II (386-417). From now on it is called "Holy Sion" (Hagia Sion).

SION Main

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