I have been sharing background information about a key concept that is the foundation of our communal worship: ANAMNESIS. It is a concept that was also foundational for Jewish worship. Consider how Judaism recalls the Passover. It is a true reliving of this event in Jewish history.

By Christian initiation, believers are drawn into participating in the present, Christ’s paschal mystery. As stated in Romans 6:3-4: “We who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death… We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”

On one hand, both the Old and New Testaments are replete with the notion of anamnesis, as the remembrance of God’s past action that leads to “newness of life” in the present. On the other hand, the Greek anamnesis and its cognates, and the Hebrew zikkaron, which has the nearest meaning to anamnesis, are not common words in Scripture. Derivatives of zikkaron appear fifty-nine times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and its usage is most often connected to temple sacrifice. Anamnesis and its cognates appear only nine times in the Septuagint and, in the New Testament, anamnesis and similar words are even rarer, with only seven appearances. The form found in 1 Corinithians 11:24-25, ἀνάμνησιν, occurs in only one instance in the New Testament outside of these two verses, in Luke’s account of the Last Supper (22:19).

As one scholar points out, the nominative case noun ἀνάμνησις occurs only once in the New Testament, in Hebrews 10:3, and is also found only once in the Septuagint, in Numbers 10:10. In the latter case, the Israelites are told that their offerings and festivals “will serve as a reminder of” God’s perpetual presence in their midst. In the letter to the Hebrews, the limitation of the high-priestly sin offering compared to “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10) is stressed: “In those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins” (v 3).

As you might surmise, this concept of remembering in the present things of the past and, therefore, those things becoming truly real, is essential for our understanding of what we do during our communal worship. Truly Christ is as present in the Liturgy as He was at the Last Supper.