Remembering Easter

There is a Russian Orthodox monk who teaches at Marquette, of whom I have previously written on this blog, named Father Alexander. Through these first few months that I have known him, he has always worn the same thing, a rather tattered, plain black monastic robe. Today, I noticed that he had undergone a stunning transformation - he was dressed in a white robe, an ancient monastic tradition marking the change of reality brought by the resurrection.

Of course, Jesus resurrected from the grave several millenia ago; thus, we have technically been living in the new age, the age where death is abolished and the world in the process of recreation, for the entirety of all of our lives. What change should there be, then, from last week to now? In a word, much.

The church rehearses the Christian story each year through our reading of Scripture and our liturgical celebrations. We do this to remind us of the decisive truths that God has acted definitively in the world to save us from sin and death. We are a sinful people who, like Israel, too quickly forget. We are in desperate need, in other words, of remembering.

The Greek word for "remembrance" is anamnesis, and it is much more nuanced than our English word "remember." When we say we "remember", we think about something that is in the past and we think about that time back then, that is, back in the past. But anamnesis is not simply the remembering of something that is in the past. Rather, it is the re-calling of something in the past so as to make it present for us today. Anamnesis is literally the re-presenting of a past event in our present life. Thus, when the church remembers the resurrection of the Lord, we do not simply think about a past event, we bring that past event into our present reality. Christ the Lord is risen today!

The early church symbolized this through the ancient tradition of Easter morning baptisms. Normally, Easter was the only day in which a baptism would take place. And the catechumens would be led to the living water at dawn on Easter morning, the same time that the women came upon the empty tomb. As the catechumens were baptized in the water, they remembered the resurrection of their Lord and it was present to them. And coming out of the water, they dawned the white robe symbolizing their new, imperishable garments in Christ.

Christ died and rose 2000 years ago, yes. But in our rehearsal of the story yesterday, we have made the reality of the empty tomb real in our time. As a result, there is a change this week from last week. Our remembering of that story and that truth ought encourage us to walk in the new life. We all, like Father Alexander, should be walking in white robes.