Loading...Have you ever had a moment during an oft-repeated pleasant pastime which takes you by surprise and, all of a sudden, it’s the first time all over again, as fresh and new as that original moment?
It happened to me last Saturday, while driving across miles and miles of Texas[1] on the return from our spring break escapade in Louisiana. The music stored on my smart phone was shuffling randomly from one song to the next, when along came a certain song[2], and for a moment I was 19 again, driving in the 1970 Plymouth Belvedere my dad deeded to me, and it was the very first time I heard that song. The moment was fleeting, but it was pretty cool to be my 19 year old self again, even if ever so briefly.
Such wrinkles in time[3] are not unique to me. They sneak up on all of us from time to time. I might actually say, in fact I will say, that St. Paul is inviting the Christians in Corinth, and us by extension, into such an experience in which a moment that is past becomes very much present.
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed
took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”[4]
This is the earliest written account we have of the Last Supper[5], since it is widely believed that Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthians before any of the gospels were written. Paul tells us that Jesus took bread and wine from the Passover table, which is itself a meal of remembrance, and that he charged those elements with new meaning and a new kind of remembrance. The bread to be his body, the wine to be his blood, the meal to be shared in remembrance of him.
It’s a special kind of remembrance. When we hear that word, we are likely to think back to a past event, like hearing a certain song for the first time, and may even drift back into that time in a moment of nostalgia. It can be a pleasant distraction, but it is a one way road back in time. The kind of remembrance that Paul writes of Jesus summoning us into is called Anamnesis, a mystical view along the entire road. In that moment of sharing the bread broken and the wine poured, we are there, as C.H. Dodd, the 20th century Welsh New Testament scholar put it, in the upper room on that last night, at Golgotha on that dark Friday, before the empty tomb on Sunday morning, and back again in the upper room on Sunday evening when he appears in our midst.[6] It doesn’t stop there, though, with that backward look into those core events. This kind of remembrance takes us forward to what C.H. Dodd said, “is partly beyond history—the ascension, the sitting at the right hand of the Father and the second coming.”[7] We are given a glimpse into the final act of the great drama of salvation, the making right of all things, the final renewal of creation so profound that it will never again not be brand new.
We are there, mystically with our Lord in those moments long past during three days one spring in Old Jerusalem. We are there with him, with our heavenly Father, and with the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven at the close of this age. But, there is another aspect of Anamnesis that is a special gift of grace to us. In that moment of sharing, as we are simultaneously present to the historical past and the eschatological future, the One whom we remember in the bread and wine comes into our present moment, with its joys and sorrows, its untidiness, its questions and concerns, its doubts and fears, its faith and hope, and through the working of the Holy Spirit he is present to us, as present as the person sitting next to us, moreso even.
In the 15th century, Thomas a’Kempis, who is most famous for his book, The Imitation of Christ, gave a sermon on the fruit of remembering the Passion of Christ in the Eucharist. Among the benefits he said we can find are the teaching of patience, comfort in tribulation, the exercise of interior devotion, banishing of despair, the certain hope of pardon, surpassing confidence in the hour of death, the soothing of anxiety, the endurance of harsh criticism, the expulsion of evil thoughts, restraint of temptation, instruction in humility, relief from sickness of body, foregoing of worldly honors, denial of greed, renunciation of selfish interest, the impulse for fervent amendment of life, the gain of fuller grace, and the increase of future blessedness.[8]
These are fruits to receive thankfully from one who is present, who comes alongside, who washes our feet, and walks with us along the road that leads, through his death, into the fullness of life.
Matthew Rowe+
[1] Credit to Asleep at the Wheel for that phrase
[2] Radio Free Europe by R.E.M.
[3] Credit to Madeline L’Engle for that phrase
[4] 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
[5] Wright, N.T. Paul for Everyone: 1st Corinthians. (section on 11:23-34 in Logos Bible Software).
[6] Dix, G. (1945). The Shape of the Liturgy (Second Edition, pp. 263–266). Westminster: Dacre Press.
[7] ibid
[8] A’Kempis, Thomas. Sermons on the Life and Passion of Our Lord. Chapter XXXIV, Of the manifold fruit from remembrance of the Lord’s Passion, and of thankfulness therefore
