Do this as a ‘zikaron’ of me

First Reading: Gn 14:18-20
Second Reading: 1 Cor 11:23-26
Gospel Reading: Lk 9:11b-17

This Sunday we honour the “Body and Blood of Christ” in the Eucharist – in Latin Corpus Christi. 

It had been foreshadowed some 2,100 years earlier by the bread and wine that Melchizedek brought to Abraham, and again by Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the huge crowd.

Now we have the real thing.

At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and said, “This is my Body that is for you”; he took wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my Blood.”

To the apostles, it must have recalled what Moses had said as he sprinkled the blood of the sacrifices over the people at Sinai: “This is the blood of the covenant the Lord has made with you.”

But Jesus is God the Son. His words must have actually accomplished or brought about what they meant. What still seemed to be bread and wine, then, were no longer bread and wine, but his Body and his Blood. He himself said so.

Then he added, “Do this in remembrance of me.” To the apostles, it must have recalled God’s command to their ancestors at the making of the old covenant: to “celebrate” their exodus from Egypt every year with “a memorial feast.”

(Actually, that was what the Last Supper was. “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,” Jesus said.)

However, “remembrance,” “celebration,” and “memorial” do not mean to us quite what Jesus’ command meant to his apostles or God’s command to their ancestors.

In Hebrew, the word is zikaron. Jews speak of a zikaron of creation, the exodus, or the temple: always a thing or event from another era, usually the past. However, zikaron can also mean “rehearsal.”

A zikaron connects us across time and space to something that might otherwise be lost. Even after the remembrance has ended, that connection remains with us and commits us to its lessons.

For example, “this is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “every time Passover is celebrated, the exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.”

In Greek, zikaron is anamnesis. However, anamnesis has no equivalent in English. “Memorial,” “remembrance,” and “commemoration” all suggest “recollection” of the past, but anamnesis means making it present, coalescing past and present into now, as if we experience them simultaneously.

In an anamnesis, “we mysteriously become contemporaries of the event,” says Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa: “the event is present for us and we are present at the event.”

Accordingly, we supplement “memorial” and “remembrance” with words like “re-presenting,” “re-actualizing,” and “re-newing,” which focus on the presence of the event to us, or “re-living,” “participating,” and “celebrating,” which focus on our presence at the event.

I like my mother’s metaphor. The sun is always shining on the earth. However, every morning, the earth’s rotation re-presents the sun to us; alternatively, we participate anew in its warmth and light.

Therefore, when Jesus said, “Do this as an anamnesis of me,” He was telling his apostles not just to recall or imitate what he had done, but to re-present, re-actualize, and re-new it so that we could re-live it, celebrate it, and participate in it.

And that included both his natural words and actions and his supernatural change of bread and wine into his Body and Blood.

The apostles could perform his natural words and actions by their own power, but not the supernatural change. Jesus’ command, therefore, implied a promise that their performance of the natural words and actions would bring about the supernatural change.

Beyond all imagination – but not beyond belief – this is what happens at Mass. By her liturgy, the Church makes Christ’s Passover present, says the Catechism. We take part in Christ’s Last Supper; we eat his Body and drink his Blood.

Father Hawkswell has now finished  teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course, and will remain available until the end of August. Father will teach the whole course again starting in September.

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