We are not on a bible land history tour this week. We could say that these days celebrate the last days of Jesus’ life from the Last Supper onward, but that would be to shortchange the meaning of the days. They are not reenactments, but they are at the heart of the Mystery of our Faith: as the former Sacramentary said: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We are not weeping and wailing on Friday and pretending we don’t know the end of the story. We experience (not feel) the death of Jesus through the eyes of the resurrection; we experience the resurrection through the eyes of his death.
This kind of remembering is called Anamnesis. Anamnesis comes from a Greek word meaning recollection or remembering. If you look carefully at the word, you see that the ending of it looks like the word amnesia. Putting the prefix “an” at the beginning of the word amnesia means we are looking at something that is the opposite of having amnesia.
Anamnesis is about remembering. We do not remember the death and resurrection of Jesus in the same way we recall other events from the past, such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or the life of Mother Teresa. Christ is not a dead person we remember with fondness. He is the living Lord. Christ is present in our lives today and will be present into the future. We do not time-travel back to the days of Jesus to witness his death or resurrection. The original event becomes our event today as we celebrate the Mass together. The sacrifice of Jesus becomes our sacrifice. The bread and wine become the living Body and Blood of Jesus which we consume.
Past, present, and future come together as we celebrate that “Jesus Christ is risen today” – not 2,000 years ago. The past event has meaning today and draws us into a future reality, God’s banquet in the heavenly kingdom.
Note that an element of the Eucharistic Prayer is Anamnesis. A section of the book Participation of the Heart, Deeper Engagement in the Mass explains the meaning of Anamnesis as part of the Eucharistic Prayer.
