*Image: Friend of the Humble (Supper at Emmaus) by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte, 1892 [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA]
By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, March 30, 2021
Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. …
“This is my body, the body given on your behalf. This you are all to do, for a remembrance of me.” (Lk 22:19) Thus a rather wooden and literal translation, which preserves the word order, and the oddities of the original language, clearly connoting something strange and mysterious. What does it mean?
When I was a Protestant, I would hear that the Eucharist is solely a memorial, no different from the Washing of Feet, or Stations of the Cross, because Jesus said so: it was “for a remembrance.”
Of course, it doesn’t follow. A remembrance need not be solely a remembrance, and the very thing remembered, or something close to it, can be the means of remembrance. For instance, it makes perfect sense for a married couple to regard their intimate union as a remembrance of their wedding – their original act of union – but need it be said that an act which can procreate a child is hardly a “mere” remembrance? …