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19th Aug 2009Posted in: Blog 0
Moltmann – Eucharist: the Sacrament of Remembered Hope.

The following quote is powerful enough to start a true revolution.

In the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist, what history and life ‘between the times’ means for Christians is experienced in an examplary and definitive way. It is the sign of remembrance of Christ’s suffering and death ‘for many’, a remembrance which makes present, and as such it is what Aquinas calls a commemorative sign – a signum rememorativum. In its making-present of the new world of the resurrection and eternal life it is also a foreshadowing sign, a signum prognosticon. And in the simultaneity of the remembered suffering and death of Christ and the anticipated glory of Christ risen and to come, it is a demonstrative sign – a signum demostrativum - of Christ’s present grace. In this feast, in our mindfulness of Christ’s history of suffering, his redeeming future is, in anticipation, already given. As the simultaneous presence of the Christ who has come and the Christ who will come, it is the sacrament of remembered hope. ‘In it the time is “fulfilled”, the past is present today and for us; in it the One who will come is “there”, today and for us. The feast is ‘open’ in a forward direction, because it throws open God’s future and sets us in history, which leads to God’s new world. The Lord’s supper, the eucharist, is therefore for Christian theology the true’ historical sign’.

- Prof. Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology

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