The Eucharist is surely a mystery that goes far beyond the simplicity of the ritual we experience as a community each Sunday. The words prayed by the priest and responded to by the assembly are so familiar to us that we allow them to wash over us comfortably without taking the time to reflect on the profundity of their meaning. Here is a well that is deeper than the mind can comprehend and more full than the heart can express. With this brief paper we invite our reader to revisit this well in the deserts of our daily journeying and plunge into its deeper meaning.

We are not alone in our need to reflect on the gift of Eucharist, nor are we the first generation to stand in amazement before its wonder. It all began on the day of the Resurrection when the two disciples of Emmaus returned to the Upper Room to recount "their story of what had happened on the road and how they recognized him in the breaking of bread. They were still talking about all this when [Jesus] himself stood among them" (Luke 24: 13-36). How they must have struggled with their words amid the rush of thoughts connecting and conflicting, and the density of feelings that overwhelmed them as the gazed on one who had died, yet now was living. This on-going reflection became the story, which became the gospel, which became the teaching, which in our turn, we strive to possess. St Paul once wrote to the people of Corinth in these words,

Not once, but twice, St Paul reminds us that Jesus said, "Do this as a memorial of me." Was it likely that anyone who witnessed the Resurrection could forget so momentous a gift? Was St Paul underlining a connection that others might have missed in these words? Can we grasp the sense of the word 'memorial' as St Paul used it?

In our time, the word 'memory' is recognized as the ability to recall past events. We look back in time to that which happened once, but now happens no more. We record history and store it away as a legacy to be remembered. Like footprints left in the desert sands, we follow, but without owning the journey others have made. Our linear sense of time and space disconnects us from those who walked this way before. We say, "That was then, but this is now." We know that the origins of our faith are intertwined with ancient Judaism but seldom do we revisit these connections except as historical or archeological curiosities. Our sense of remembering can not be further from the experience of the original members of our family of faith. The ancient Jewish sense of the word 'memorial' is packaged quite differently and we need to 'unpack' this word in order to savour the fullness of what is being told to us in sacred scripture.

The double underlining of the word 'memorial', as mentioned by St Paul in his letter to the people of Corinth, speaks to us across the centuries with a sense that draws heavily on the scholarship and appreciation of his own biblical roots. St Paul was awe-struck by the fact that the sacrifice of Christ happened in the midst of the Passover celebrations of his own people. In the words of Jesus, spoken at the Last Supper, St Paul hears anew the instructions of Moses to the people on the manner in which the Passover was to be celebrated. "This day is to be a day of remembrance for you, and you must celebrate it as a feast in Yahweh's honour. For all generations you are to declare it a day of festival, for ever" (Exodus 12: 1-14). The use of the words, memorial and remembrance, tie both events together with profound intent. Yet there is more in the meaning.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, St Paul returns to this conceptual connection while trying to explain the priesthood of Christ in the light of the priesthood of the tribe of Levi and the ancient priesthood of Melchizedek. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes, "It could be said that Levi himself, who receives tithes, actually paid them, in the person of Abraham, because he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek came to meet him" (Hebrews 7:10). Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob counted Levi as one of his twelve sons. Moses and his brother Aaron were men of the tribe of Levi. They were separated in time from Abraham by more than five hundred years, yet they are all seen as alive "in the loins of their father Abraham" when the priest-king of Salem came to meet him. Since this story comes to us from the time of the Exodus, it would appear plausible that the command of Moses for a day of 'remembrance' also includes the concept of life living within life, for all generations. Though we know the biological fact to be inaccurate by the standards of modern science, we have to admire the wisdom that understood all generations to be present to the God who chooses them as His people. While we might smile at the inaccuracy of the biological data, the idea lives on in the hollow matryoshka 'nesting-dolls' of Russia where successively smaller dolls rest inside the others waiting to be set free. Just so, each generation of Hebrew people comes forth to celebrate the Passover, moving from bondage to freedom, and from death to life, not as ones who remember only what they were told of the past, but as those who, even at the time of the covenant, were there in person,"alive in the loins of the father." This metaphor is more than symbolic. For the Hebrew mind, it shouts, 'Now is the time in which my generation lives and walks the earth. Now is the time for us to celebrate the covenant God made with us as we, the people, were standing at the foot of Sinai.'

The pattern of a covenant with God was set in the time of Moses. Now the pattern of the New Covenant is "en-livened" in the words and the saving actions of Jesus. While speaking to the Hebrew mind of Nicodemus, Jesus called him to faith by reminding Nicodemus of a parallel event in the time of Moses; ". . . [T]he Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him" (John 3: 13-14). To this, St John's gospel adds, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He" (John 8:28) and ". . . [W]hen I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Jesus understood and taught that sacrifice was necessary on our part as an appropriate response to God who "loved the world so much that he gave his only son" (John 3:15). Both in his divinity and his humanity Jesus submitted totally to the will of the Father. "His state was divine yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a cross" (Philppians 2:6-8).

The sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary is inextricably linked to the memorial meal on the night before he died and to the glorious resurrection which followed. In our faith, this is the action central to all that we believe. Christ's death on the cross does not stand independently from the other two events. They are all one action. As the Word of God, the Second and Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus revealed his willingness to submit to the Will of the Father when he took the bread in his hands, broke it, and gave it to his disciples with the words "This is my body." Then he took the cup and shared it among them with the words, "This is my blood." The separate giving of the bread and the wine, the body and the blood, bespeak his death in anticipation of the sacrifice about to endured on the cross of Calvary. That which was given in faith and trust on the night before he died would be given in truth and in fact in the new Passover. Like the blood smeared on the doorposts of the Israelites, even as they consumed the flesh of the lambs on the eve of the Exodus, the blood of Christ was poured out on the people who had eaten the Bread of Life and drunk from the Cup of Eternal Salvation. Like Moses who recognized the indwelling of all generations in the Covenant of Sinai, Jesus draws all to himself in his death on the cross so that we might have new life in him. During the last supper, the apostle John records that Jesus said,

Here again is the concept of life within life. But what is this life of which Jesus speaks? The promise of the first Eucharist becomes the sacrifice of the cross which in turn becomes the reality of Resurrection for all. How can we comprehend this truth and embrace the freedom of the new Exodus?

When Jesus was dying on the cross, he began to pray. He began with a prayer of submission: "My God, my God, why have you deserted me?" (Psalm 22:1). He ends with a cry of victory: "It is accomplished" (John 21:30). These two statements are the prelude and the postscript to the 22nd Psalm which ends with the words: "The whole earth, from end to end, will remember and come back to Yahweh; all the families of the nations will bow down before him. For Yahweh reigns, the ruler of nations! . . . And my soul will live for him, my children will serve him; men will proclaim the Lord to generations still to come, his righteousness to a people yet unborn. All this he has done. . . It is accomplished" (Psalm 22: 27-31).

When Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to the disciples many times in order that they might be witnesses of the resurrection among the nations of the world. Curiously, on several occasions, he did so at meal time. He walked with the two disciples to Emmaus and opened their hearts to the truth of scriptures, yet they did not recognize him until he broke bread with them that evening (Luke 24: 13-35). He appeared to the apostles in the Upper Room and asked them "Have you anything here to eat?" and he then ate the grilled fish that was offered to him (Luke 24:42). "He appeared to them a third time on the shores of the Sea of Galilee saying, "Come and have breakfast" (John 21:12). To their amazement Jesus offered them bread and fish, a reminder of the miracle of the loaves and fishes with which he fed more than five thousand people. Eating is an action of 'life-within-life'. It is a time of sharing, of loving, of remembering, of entering into unity with others. It is also a time of commissioning, of sending forth. Jesus told Peter. "Feed my sheep" (John 21:17).

The Eucharist banquet stands connected to the death and resurrection of Christ for the greater glory of God. The Eucharist is a memorial, a remembrance of what God did for us, of what Christ did for us, and what we do for God through Christ. Without the sacrifice of Christ we would be powerless to enter into this saving dynamic. In Christ, we discover who we really are. Our true selves are discovered not in ourselves alone but in our grace filled connectedness to Christ. Those who have entered into this mysterious union with Christ by the grace of baptism are the people who have died with him in the death of baptism and rise again to live new life. To discover that we are united to Christ through baptism is to know that being members of the Church is more than being a social aggregate riding on the same bus to a more-or-less similar destination. Having been initiated into the life of grace by water and the Spirit we are united to Christ in each celebration of the Eucharist. We become the Body of Christ itself.

St Paul returns to these thoughts again and again in his epistles. He says, "If it is certain that death reigned over everyone as the consequence of one man's [Adam's] fall, it is even more certain that one man, Jesus Christ, will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift ...of being made righteous" (Romans 5:17). "Now you together are Christ's body" (1 Corinthians 12: 27). "There is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one and the same hope when you were called. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who is Father of all, over all, through all and within all" (Ephesians 4:4-6). "The blessing cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ. The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf" (1 Corinthians 10: 16-17).

Each time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we, the Church, the people of God, encounter Christ sacramentally. We share the same food that was broken and shared at the last supper. We witness the death of Christ itself, for Christ died once for all. We stand with him in joyful adoration of the Father, worshipfully bound together in the one Spirit and cry 'Amen' to the perfect sacrifice of praise. In the density of the moment; in the simplicity of the ritual; in the hidden language of sign and symbol; in the 'lived- memorial' commanded by Christ, he comes among us and invites us into his life, not as a past event locked in history, or in the promised hope of a glorious future, but in the one event of Christ dying and rising which is no less present to us than it was to the first witnesses of the faith, yet no more present to us than to generations yet unborn. Together we learn to live life within life through him, with him and in him.

Father Al McMillan is the pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle parish