The Mass – Holy Remembering

-August 16, 2009

4. Our celebration of the Eucharist: rooted in the past, alive in the present, and offering a taste of the future…

These three dimensions are part of what we experience every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. Rooted in the past (the sacrifice of the cross)…alive in the present (Jesus’ gift of his very self as real food and real drink)…and offering a taste of the future (the anticipation of the liturgy of eternity)…all three are part of this holy memorial we celebrate as a source of our strength, unity, and the sustenance that feeds our faith, fires our hope and inspires our love.

In the ritual of the breaking of the bread, it can be said that heaven and earth meet, for in that action of remembering what Jesus did, the risen Christ becomes truly present, and in that encounter he allows himself to be experienced and consumed as bread and wine. We who partake of this holy remembering are also charged with a challenge: we are to be similarly taken by Christ, blessed and broken like Christ and given as he was so that others might know something of his life and goodness in us. When this challenge seems impossible or impractical, Christians return to this place where heaven and earth meet for further nourishment.

But just how do heaven and earth meet in the liturgy? The key is in the word, “remembering;” that is, “holy remembering” or “anamnesis.” Put simply, we believe that through our act of remembering, we make that which is remembered present again. Recall what we said a couple of weeks ago in this column: “In the liturgy, time drops out; you are there!” (Dr. Paul Ford) However, “you are there” not in a literal, shallow sense of play-acting or merely participating in some historical reenactment of a moment in the life of Jesus, no matter how realistically such an experience might be presented. No, whenever Christians gather, our “remembering”…our “anamnesis” of what Jesus did for us, and what he gave us (the Eucharist)… makes us enter a higher, more spiritually charged plane which is not bound by time or the trappings of a particular place or culture; a place where all that is temporary and imperfect recedes in our consciousness. What is experienced most acutely is that which is timeless, the wedding of heaven and earth. The Eucharist is the marriage feast of our wedding! So often we have sung:

I am the first and last, the Living One;
I am the Lord who died that you might live;
I am the bridegroom, this my wedding song;
You are my bride, come to the marriage feast.
Take and eat; take and eat: this is my body given up for you.
Take and drink; take and drink: this is my blood given up for you.
—from Take and Eat by Michael Joncas

Perhaps a simpler way of stating all this is to say that what we do at Mass is not about mere nostalgia. Nostalgia is about the past; our act of remembering is more about present realities. Nostalgia transports us back in time so we can recover faded feelings. On the contrary, our remembering brings the past into the present so we can actually bring to life now in a spiritually real way what might have been buried in the past.

At Mass, we are not trying to simply feel what Jesus and his friends felt at the Last Supper. That is a good thing to do in private meditation—entering into similar feelings gives us emotional equality, helps us share their lives. However, the Mass is not about emotion. The Mass is about the broken and bloody body of Jesus sacrificed for us. This means that celebrating it in his memory is more than eating bread and drinking wine, even though they really are his body and blood. To remember his death directly involves us in his life that brought him to that death.

Nostalgia merely reminds us of what Jesus did “then.” Remembering… “anamnesis”…reminds us of what he is doing now…in this place…in this community…this parish…this point in history…in you and me…and to where it is leading us…our future lived in communion with heaven and earth!

—Compiled by David Orzechowski, Liturgy & Music. Based on two articles from Celebration: “Sealed and Bound by Blood” by Patricia Sanchez and “Forget Nostalgia” by Father James Smith