"Behold, I have told you!" Matthew 28:7

Easter has arrived. We recall the saving work of Jesus. We remember that He suffered, died, and rose for us. The power of remembrance is the strength to bring into the present something of the past so that we might relive it.

The ancients took this remembrance very seriously. When I speak of the ancients, I am referring specifically to the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans, who are our cultural roots. They shared some very basic things in common. One of these was an appreciation for the power of memory.

As with Jesus, Socrates wrote nothing. It was his great student Plato that recorded most of what we know about him. Plato memorialized his beloved teacher after his death and wrote, "To remember Socrates, and what he said himself, and what was said to him is always the most precious thing in the world to me" (Phaedo, 58d). For the ancients, be they philosophers or prophets, remembering was not an end but a beginning. God takes this memory and raises it to a sacrament.

In the Bible memory is important. God must remember man, and man must remember God. Memory is vital. To remember is to bring into the present a past event and to relive it. God tells Noah in Genesis, "I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings" (Genesis 9:15). God does not forget, and above all He remembers. His remembrance manifests itself over and over again.

At that great redeeming moment for the Jewish people, the Exodus, we are told, "As their cry for release went up to God, he heard their groaning and was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" (Exodus 2:23-24). As God remembered, the Chosen People responded by remembering. They did so in that great act of remembrance, the Passover. The Passover is the ritual meal, with the lamb and unleavened bread as the centerpiece, that the Jews eat every year not only to recall but also to relive their deliverance. Exodus reads, "This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution" (Exodus 12:14). The stage then is set by the Greeks in their philosophy and by the Jews in their scriptures for what Jesus will do.

At the time of Passover, Jesus seated Himself with His disciples. In the act of celebrating a remembrance, He did not want His followers to forget Him. So He took bread and wine, gave thanks, invoked the blessing, gave it to them and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me" (I Corinthians 11:24-25). The words of Plato keep ringing in my ears, "to rememberŠ what he said himself, and what was said to him is always the most precious thing in the world to me." The apostles and their disciples and the Church by extension believe the same of Christ.

To remember is not just to recall. To remember is to preserve and to invoke. For this reason St. Paul will write of the Eucharistic institution, "Every time, then, you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes!" (I Corinthians 11:26). Both the Jews and the Greeks had a word for this living memory. The Jews called it "Zikaron." The Greeks called it "anamnesis". With this remembrance in mind, when we reach the "anamnesis" or remembrance of the Eucharistic Prayers of the Catholic Mass, the priest will speak in the present and recall what Jesus did. He will say, "The day before he suffered" (Eucharistic Prayer I) or "On the night he was betrayed" (Eucharistic Prayer III). The great remembrance has begun. The verb is in the present tense. The priest speaks as though he were Christ Himself. "Take this, all of you, and eat it". And the very words of Jesus are brought into the present. "This is my body which will be given up for you". In some mysterious and marvelous way God descends to earth, we are present at the Last Supper, and Jesus is speaking to us in the here and now. It is the power of memory made more intense. It is God taking "anamnesis", that both a Jeremiah and a Plato would have known all too well, and raising it to the level of a sacrament. No Jew or Greek thought of "anamnesis" as static or a mere recalling of the past. It was a vital, living preservation of a "precious" moment. Jesus takes this remembrance, raises it to a sacrament, and says, "Do this in memory of me."

God has taken human memory and raised common bread and wine to the level of a sacrament. The purpose of this great miracle is the purpose of Easter. To remember Jesus "is always the most precious thing in the world", because to remember is to bring Him into the sacramental present. This faith and hope in the life of Resurrection is what animated the preaching of the apostles. It is what excited St. Peter to say, "This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead" (Acts 10:40-41). They ate and drank with him just as surely because the sacramental memory would not die, and for that reason we eat and drink with him in the Eucharist so that we might live.

St. Paul writes, "Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed" (II Corinthians 4:10). What Jesus said and did is precious to us because in it we find life. In this sense our lives are "hidden now with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). The Eucharist is the "everlasting memorial" because the death of the Lord and His Resurrection are made present to us. The Eucharist is our Easter sacrament. The Eucharist is a living memory that cannot die.

This is Easter. This is the message of hope, not locked up in a past event but unfolded into the present by a living memory. A pure gift from God, the sacrament has seized the most precious memory of what was done and said and defied time to bring it to life for us. In this context what Jesus said of His Body and Blood is as alive now as it was when He first said it. "If anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (John 6:51).