He was asking for the gift of anamnesis.

At the Last Supper, Jesus told the Apostles “Do this in memory of me.” (“anamnesis“)

In our modern world, the translation of the word ‘anamnesis’ as ‘memory’ loses virtually ALL of its impact, all of its meaning, though in fact it is the primary act of the Holy Mass which is the Eucharist.

This is one of the areas in modern life that is very, very different from any other time in history.  For us, memory or remembering is an intellectual recall of an experience we participated in ourselves, or the recall of something we need to do, like ‘pick up the dry cleaning.’   We remember to go to church, we remember that Jesus is our Savior, we remember to call our mothers, we remember to mail the phone bill by the second of the month.

We have a great need for a good memory- how embarrassing is it to forget someone’s name?

Yet an exercise in memory is not the point of the Holy Mass, and remembering the scene of the Last Supper from the movie ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ gets us no closer to either anamnesis nor our salvation.

A pure exercise in memory makes the mass seem boring, the scripture readings seem like a meaningless monotone, and deaden the activity of the Holy Spirit within us.  Untold numbers of people have left the Church, and their salvation, for no other reason.

What exactly IS anamnesis?

Anamnesis is a Greek word.  During Jesus’ day, and in the life of the Hebrews, the word meant the universal experience of every soul, a ‘redivivus‘ which is a ‘re-living’ of the important events during which God interacted in powerful ways with humanity.  It was the position of those alive at the time that these events were available to every soul.

This is why Jesus asked the Apostles “who do people say that I am?”  He was not surprised when the Apostles related that people were thinking that he could be Elijah returned, or John the Baptist returned.  Those answers made perfect sense to him.  Jesus knew that they would ‘return’ at the end of time to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ and announce to humanity the final end and the Last Judgment.  Redivivus is profoundly and only an Act of God.  God DOES act in that way.  He is not ‘God of the dead, but God of the living.’

Therefore, it was proof to Jesus that His Church was truly ‘established’ when he asked the Apostles, “who do YOU say that I am,’ and Peter said, ‘You are the Christ.  The Son of the Living God.’

Peter’s anamnesis, the gift the Holy Spirit had given Peter, was deeper and went further back in history than that of other Jews, farther back than Moses.  Peter KNEW Jesus, in the depths of his soul,  from creation onward.  Therefore Jesus spoke the Word over Peter: “You are Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail over it.”

The fruit of this spectacular anamnesis would come, for all time, through the ‘re-presentation’ of the ONE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS, the ONE LAST SUPPER OF THE TRANSFIGURED DIVINIZED FLESH OF CHRIST, throughout time and eternity, through that one precious gift given to Peter.

Hell itself wouldn’t prevail over this anamnesis in the Church, but Jesus didn’t say hell wouldn’t TRY.

By the Lord speaking the WORD over Peter, it was established forever, and would prevail over every device, deceit and seduction of the devil.

The Lost Gift: Anamnesis

For us ‘moderns’ there is a great difficulty in connecting with so great a ‘heritage’ as has been provided in our Church.  It doesn’t ‘feel’ like we’ve gotten anything much.  Our parents run around with bumper stickers that say ‘I’m spending my children’s inheritance’ and somehow we KNOW that whatever inheritance we were supposed to get has been lost or squandered.

We believe that Christ is our ‘personal savior’ and Lord, because something inside of us recognizes that this is the TRUTH, but we can never ‘come to an accurate knowledge’ of it.  We also know there is much more to us than we have understood or experienced so far, but again, it is illusive and impossible to capture, let alone make live and breath in the world.  We know we are told to ‘be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,’ but our experience of ourselves and our world make this seem to be the impossible dream.

Without studying the entire bible continuously, studying all of church and world history, without being completely torn from our lives and world as we know it, is it even possible to become ‘perfect’?

The Rosary is the Most Direct Path to the Gift of Anamnesis

The prayer of the rosary cuts through any and every impediment to our holiness and lack of knowledge, and does it for everyone- from the smallest and untutored child to the most wizened, ancient, most knowledgeable of individuals.  You do not need to have every verse of scripture memorized, every chapter of the catechism at your instant disposal, you do not need to have made a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land for it all to become very real.

Our very beginning is as the Apostle Paul tells us- to ‘put on Christ’ by making the sign of the cross.  The first prayer is the direct teaching of the Apostles from the beginning- the Apostle’s Creed.

We invoke the anamnesis of Peter by praying the first few prayers for the Pope and the Church.

Then we are taken, step by step, through the life of Jesus from the Annunciation onward, each decade either planting the seed of ‘Holy Memory’ or giving those seeds and shoots ‘water and light’ making them grow.  The more frequently we pray the life of Christ, the more water and light are given to those seeds in our soul.

Properly we examine each individual and each event as we pray the ‘Hail Mary’s’ during each decade.  We meditate upon what it would be like to be the Angel Gabriel, with the incredible honor and task of seeking ‘the woman’s’ agreement to become the mother of the Savior of the world.  We consider what it would be like to be Mary, a very young woman just come into the flower of fertility, who finds in front of her the Angel asking her to be ‘the Woman’ prophesied in Genesis- the woman who’s seed would battle the seed of the serpent. Recalling the great darkness and evils of human history, all of which began at the fall of Adam and Eve, ponder the magnitude of God Himself ‘humbling himself and taking the form of a slave’ in order to grant, FINALLY, a release from the prison of hell that every single human soul has been sentenced to since the beginning of human history.

Yes, indeed, a GREAT LIGHT was born into the world, giving up all glory, all omnipotence, all power, just for His great love, just to save us the lost.

Step by step, praying each decade, each event of the life of Christ, from the perspective of the people in each mystery, your soul begins to reawaken within itself the memories of the activities of God with humanity.  We begin to experience the fact that we are CREATED by a God who loves us; who understands our lives, our hearts, our predicaments.  A God who loves us despite our sinfulness and distance, who Himself ‘goes the distance’ to save us and prove His love for us.

The Seeds of the Holy Garden

The entire rosary is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the seeds that came from the garden of the Psalms, which have always been known as ‘the prayer of the Holy Spirit.’    Hundreds and thousands of years of praying the psalms have created such fruits of the Holy Spirit, have so powerfully nourished and sustained the people of God, that the seeds and pits of those fruits are gifts to the Spouse of God, the Church, Our Lady spouse of the Holy Spirit itself, bearing its Son.

The Holy Spirit wed himself to Mary, impregnating her with the Son of God, the bread of Life, the rivers of Mercy.  As in the Song of Songs, Mary the Spouse, God’s enclosed Garden, shares those fruits and seeds with all of her children, the Church.

The Greatest Reality

The most powerful experience of anamnesis I’ve ever had was to pray the first three sets of mysteries- the Joyful, the Luminous and the Sorrowful, just before Holy Mass.  Doing that, my experience OF the mass, of the sacrifice itself, brought PRESENT TO MY HEART AND SOUL the power, the impact and the REDIVIVUS of the one sacrifice, making it a profound and REAL experience for me.  To complete the final set of mysteries, the Glorious ones, immediately after, brought home to my soul the PROMISE and reality of what God has done, for ME, and for YOU, in time and in eternity.

A TRUE Inheritance

Praying in this way, each soul can experience for themselves the inheritance of the Church, the inheritance that can never be squandered, the wonderous gift of our salvation and the glory of God.

From our very hearts and souls then, we experience the true JOYS, the true LIGHT, the true SORROWS, and the true GLORIES, of all of God’s actions for the human soul in all of history.   Our hearts are profoundly changed.  We learn what true worship really is and we can finally participate in it.