I have been asked how the anamnetic character of our Liturgy developed. Originally early Christians remembered what Jesus did on the night before He died as a way of having Him with them. They felt His presence. The actions brought back memories. There was no real concept of the bread and wine     actually being changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. It must also be   remembered that it took the Church more than 300 years to finally come to a firm belief that Jesus was actually God incarnate.

While there were some indications in two early documents of the Church, namely the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions, that somehow continuing to do what Jesus did make Him present in a real way, no direct progression can be drawn from these two sources.

While both of these early sources link anamnesis with thanksgiving, only the Apostolic Constitutions correlate anamnesis with offering. This offering is, however, not ours but that of Jesus. These sources do acknowledge that the Eucharistic celebration is an antitype of Christ’s self-sacrifice, that is something that refers to Christ’s self-sacrifice. The relationship of anamnesis and sacrifice is truly unique to the Apostolic Constitutions.

Another very significant difference between the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions is the reversal of the sequence of anamnetic thanksgiving over the Eucharistic species. In the Apostolic Constitutions, the bread is blessed first and then the wine. In the Didache the order is revered, with the wine (i.e., Kiddush Cup) blessed first, as in the traditional Sabbath meal.

The wine and bread in the Sabbath meal represented food, which is the true symbol of Life. It would seem that as the Church reflected on the reported words of Christ, namely that food truly represented Him, these elements took on the meaning of His Body and Blood.

Then, as the Church came to realize, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is truly God Incarnate, the sense of His presence in the blessed bread and wine truly took on a much more profound character. Christ is truly present with us in the transformed elements of bread and wine.

Once the Church understood that Jesus is truly God, then the possibility of Him being really present in the elements of food, took on a whole and new meaning for the Church.