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Introduction
Lord is coming, or Lord come) which dominated the worship of the early Christians has hardly any place in the petitions of Christian worshipers in our time. The salvation of the soul seems to have ab- sorbed almost entirely the concern of the Christians, and this makes the coming of the Parousia and the resurrection of the body lose their existential urgency.
II. The Eucharistic Remembrance of the Future
The area of ecclesial life in which the eager expectation of the Parousia has survived, albeit without full consciousness of its sig- nificance, is that of worship and, in particular, the Eucharist. The anamnesis14 of the events of the history of salvation for which the gifts of the Eucharist are offered to God in thanksgiving (εὐχαριστία) includes not only “the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand (of the Father)” but also “the Second and glorious Coming again (Πα- ρουσίας).”15 In the celebration of the Eucharist the ecclesial commu- nity remembers not only the past but also the future.
This remembrance of the future Coming of Christ is to be found in all the eucharistic canons of the East, but strikingly in none of the West.16 It is notable that, as far as I know, this is true for all the extant eucharistic documents from the earliest times to the present. Such a consistent divergence cannot be without theological significance. It reveals the place eschatology occupies in the two great Christian tra- ditions, confirming Yves Congar’s pertinent observation that the East “suit beaucoup plus l’idée, très présent chez les Pères et dans la liturgie, d’ une ‘phanie,’ d’une manifestation des réalités célestes, in- visibles, sur la terre. Il s’ensuit une conception principalement sacra- mentelle et iconologique de l’Église” (the East “follows much more
14 Anamnesis is is a Greek word that means the recollection or remembrance of the past. Anamnesis is a noun derived from the verb anamimneskein, which means “to be reminded.”
15 See the Liturgies bearing the names of St Basil and St John Chrysostom, which are in use in the Orthodox Church.
16 See the texts of the eucharistic canons in A. Hänge and I. Pahl, Prex Eucharistica (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1968).
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