And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance (αναμνησις) of me. (Luke 22:19)
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: This is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance (αναμνησις) of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance (αναμνησις) of me. (1 Cor 11:24-25)
In his interesting book, Eucharist and Eschatology, Methodist scholar Geoffrey Wainwright wrote the following on the use of αναμνησις (“remembrance”) in Luke 22:19//1 Cor 11:24-25:
[T]he memorial of His sacrificial death takes its place within a more comprehensive memorial of Christ Himself. Jesus said: ‘Do this in memory of me.” It is Christ Himself who is commemorated, and Christ is not only clothed with all that He did at His first coming but is also the one who is to come again. It is because the eucharist is a memorial of the one and the same Christ who has come and who is to come that the anamnesis of the anaphoras can remember ‘all thy saving dispensation for us, from thy conception, birth and holy baptism, thy saving passion, thy life-giving death, thy three days’ burial, thy glorious resurrection, thy ascension into heaven and thy sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and thy dreadful advent . . . ‘ (so the Syrian St Mark, in Renaudot II, p. 177f). It is because the eucharist is a memorial of the one and same Christ who has come and who is to come that Theodore of Mopsuestia can say that the celebrant performs sacramentally ‘cela mȇme que Notre Seigneur le Christ a effectivement accompli et accomplira’ (Hom. Cat. XV, 19, edd. Tonneau and Devreesse, p. 495). The eucharist is celebrated in the time of hope before the second coming of Christ, of which the first coming of Christ in final fulfilment of that promise. And because the Blessed Trinity is Lord of time, the one Christ who came and who is to come can come even now at the eucharist in answer to the church’s prayer, in partial fulfilment of the promise and therefore as its strengthening, even though the moment of the final coming remains a divine secret. At every eucharist the church is in fact praying that the parousia may take place at that very moment, and if the Father ‘merely’ sends His Son in the sacramental mode we have at least a taste of that future which God reserves for Himself to give one day. (Geoffrey Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology [2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981], 67)
What is important about the above is that Wainwright’s analysis does not allow for αναμνησις to mean “memorial sacrifice” as some Catholic apologists argue. Interestingly, such a “physiological” understanding of “remembrance” can be seen even contemporary with the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) when Transubstantiation would be elevated to a dogma. As Wainwright notes:
In his commentary on the liturgy (PG 140, 417-68), the eleventh- or twelfth-century Theodore of Andida also sees the eucharist as a memorial of Christ and all his work. Basing himself on the words of Christ ‘This is my body’ where ‘body’ means His whole body and not only part, Theodore begins his commentary by arguing that the eucharistic liturgy as the memorial of Christ must symbolically depict the whole of the christological economy of salvation. Besides appealing to the example of the ordinary biography which tries to portray the whole life of the person concerned, Theodore further justifies his view of the eucharistic memorial as the memorial of Christ and all his work by mentioning the fact that the gospels give a complete picture of Christ’s life ‘from His conception to His final ascension into heaven and His second coming thence’, and by comparing the liturgy to the icons, in which may be seen ‘all the mysteries of the human life of Christ our God, from the archangel Gabriel’s visit to the virgin of the Lord’s ascension into heaven and His coming’. He then goes on in fact to review the course of the liturgy and to indicate the symbolic christological significance of the various ceremonies, moving between the annunciation and, finally (ch. 38, PG 140, 465), the ascension with its promise of the return. (Ibid., 178 n. 212)
