What Does It Mean To Remember

image from Lady...

Today, millions of people all around the globe will speak these words or hear them in their own language:

This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.

Nowadays, we live in a world of digital camera memories - almost instantaneous objects, that can be enhanced and shared.  It strikes me that this is not quite the idea behind what Jesus said.  The word in Greek - αναμνησιν or anamnesis - that seems to be what the writer of the Gospel of Luke used literally means recollection -- remembrance (again).  For Jesus, the concept of remembering is central to the Judaism that he was immersed in.  Faith was a shared story remember for these people, these nomads whose name literally meant wrestling with God.

Earlier this week, the NYT reported on a recent discoveries in science that help me understand what is actually going on when I engage in the Eucharist in the remembrance of Jesus.  In a piece entitled For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving, they report

memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced

The researchers describe this reliving exemplified by when individuals

recalled a specific memory — say, a clip of Homer Simpson — the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.

This video from British Sea Power captures some of this coming alive that I associate with the experience of remembering that holy meal Jesus share & we remember 2,000 years later.