After the sequence of prayers in the Anaphora that directly address the Holy Trinity to transform the gifts and us, we pray what is called the Anamnesis. Anamnesis (from the Attic Greek word ἀνάμνησις meaning reminiscence and/or memorial sacrifice), in Christianity is a liturgical statement in which the Church refers to the memorial   character of the Eucharist and refers to the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ as the key acts that we believe brought about salvation. It has its origin in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: “Do this in memory of me” (Ancient Greek: “τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν”, which can be found in Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11: 24-25). In a wider sense, Anamnesis is a key concept in liturgical theology: in worship the faithful recall God’s saving deeds. This memorial aspect is not simply a passive process but one by which the Christian can actually enter into the Paschal mystery. Since there is no time in God, these acts are actually happening right now even though we think of them in the past. Our remembrance of these acts as saving us make Christ present to us in a real way. This requires, however, that we truly enter into the worship of God with Jesus Christ.

The prayer that follows our recitation of these events is, for me, one of the most powerful of the prayers in our   Divine Liturgy. The priest says on our behalf: We offer to You, Yours of Your own, in behalf of all and for all. Then we all say together: We praise You! We bless You! We thank You, O Lord, and we pray to You, our God.

First, I would draw your attention to the fact that we say: We offer to You, Yours of Your own! That is a direct statement that we believe that the life we have, symbolically represented by food (bread and wine) is God’s own life. So we offer to back to God, together with Christ, the life He is sharing with us. We don’t offer God only something that we own. We offer Him the gift that He has given us, the most important   possession that we have – LIFE. There can be no greater gift that we could   offer to God than the life He is sharing with us. This means that we are willing, like Jesus, to empty ourselves of all that we have in order to praise Him and thank Him.

I don’t know about you but I feel this is an extremely powerful act if we truly mean it and understand what we do.