Do this in remembrance of me!
"Was ever command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth".
"Men have found no better thing to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover;
“Week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the holy common people of God".
Do this in remembrance of me! Was ever a command so obeyed?
In these striking words Anglican monk, Gregory Dix celebrates the awe and wonder of the Holy Eucharist instituted on this most sacred night. In his book The Shape of the Liturgy still used in Anglican Theological Colleges Fr Dix writes "the eucharistic action (is) inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world...the eucharist (has the) power of laying hold of human life, of grasping it...in the particular concrete realities of it..laying hold of them and translating them into something beyond time".
Our Lord Jesus ordained the sacrament of the Eucharist in order that we might be able to join on earth in the pleading of His eternal sacrifice sealed in his blood before the face of God the Father. Then, secondly, that he might feed our souls with his sacred Body and Blood and unite us into One Body, the Church, the Body of Christ.
I wonder how many of us would remember or believe or continue to hold fresh in our memories from Confirmation training those facts
- I mean: Our Lord giving us the eucharist first to allow us to plead his memorial Sacrifice and offer our lives with him to be consecrated lives and then second, second, note, to give us heavenly Food and make us one Bread, one Body? Or do we tend to make our default the second purpose of the Eucharist? Do we come to Church like we go to Sainsbury’s to get supplied for ourselves and to meet our friends?
That should come second. We come first to offer the eucharist - to plead Christ's Sacrifice for the needs of the living and the dead, for others as well as for ourselves. That long list from Gregory Dix reminds me how all through my life the Eucharist has been means of sanctifying the lives I minister to, of taking, blessing, breaking sometimes a situation brought on my heart to the Altar for Christ to carry in Sacrifice to his Father.
Each Eucharist, majestic or simple, pleads Calvary. Pleads, note, not repeats. Christ died once for all. His death can’t be repeated but his Sacrifice abides for ever. It is that sacrifice being solemnly renewed before us this evening as he blesses bread and wine through his priest."This is my Body...this is my Blood" offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion. It's a good Anglican practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar, a practice saluting the Real Presence of Christ. Outside the eucharist, Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Tabernacle. To honour that perpetual presence by bowing or bending the knee does not deny that presence elsewhere through the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in nature, in holy people and so on.
Yet mindful of Christ's Presence let us never forget its vital link to the first purpose of every Eucharist, announced by Our Lord on this Eve of his passion, which is action, sacrificial action. We are to give our lives, our souls and bodies, our needs, our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our fears, in union with his perfect Offering. Lives so given are lives consecrated, lives transformed by the Gift of the consecrated elements, "The Body of Christ", "Amen","The Blood of Christ", "Amen".
Through Him, with Him and in Him, then, let us give glory to God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit this most holy night, confident that God will accept our self offering and as ever give us more than we can ask or imagine in this most Holy Sacrament.
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