Percy Shelley (1792-1822), whose wife Mary wrote the book Frankenstein’s Monster, wrote this brief poem a couple of years before he died, aged 30. It’s all about memories:Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory —Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.It’s a powerful image of music vibrating in the memory, of odours lingering on the senses, of love slumbering on after death. Memories can be very powerful things. Do this, Jesus says, in memory of me. This is one of Jesus’ most powerful statements both in the sense that it is one of the most obeyed commandments: in this parish a couple of hundred people every week across ten Masses do precisely what He said to do in memory of Him. But it’s also one of Jesus’ most powerful statements because it is quite often disputed what precisely He meant and I want to try and unpack that this evening. In some ways the least controversial bit is what we’re told to do: take, eat, take, drink. So I’m not going to dwell on that. It’s the other bits I want to focus on: (1) what does in remembrance mean and (2) what are we commemorating. Remembrance can mean recalling. I remember what being twenty felt like – I think! – though it’s all a bit of haze. But how can I remember what I didn’t do? That’s more like commemorating, surely? Commemorating is what we do when we mark Remembrance Sunday, or when we keep a minute’s silence when someone has died, or even when we celebrate something like Lent, which is based on an event in the Lord’s life, the memorial of which we keep. One way we quite often memorialise something is through stone statues, of course. Think of the World War I memorials up and down the country or blue plaques saying so-and-so lived in this or that place.Such memorialising through a meal was familiar to the Jews. The Passover was a memorial meal, commemorating the freedom won by God as they left Pharoah and Egypt and memories of slavery behind and being for the first time able to worship God in the wilderness. But there was always a sense of reenactment in what the Jews were doing, as we heard in Exodus 12:11 “This is how you shall eat it: loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” The people had had to leave Pharaoh in a hurry and rush off before he changed his mind. It’s verging on the sort of re-enactment we see in historical societies who re-play battles from the past. It’s really easy to do this, for example, at Battle in Sussex where the Battle of Hastings took place. The English were at the top of the hill, the Normans at the bottom of the Hill and Normans pretended they were running away. The English came down the hill and the Normans turned round and killed them. There’s another type of remembering though. This type of remembering isn’t just reenacting, nor is it just commemorating, it’s living in the light of what’s being remembered. The Suffragettes and all those who fought for the right of women to vote need to be commemorated in statues and have blocks of flats named after them, but more importantly they would want people, surely, to vote in elections. They’d want women to stand for Parliament and get elected. Honouring loved ones who have died isn’t just about visiting their grave or dressing in the way they dressed but it is about holding to what was true in their lives – not necessarily their idiosyncrasies and odd habits they believed to be true – but to hold ourselves up to a standard of what is true and live life under God’s guidance.Usually during this Maundy Thursday Mass we do a bit of play acting by re-enacting the foot washing that our Lord did at the last Supper. It’s a powerful bit of memorialising undoubtedly and it’s a great shame we can’t do it this evening because of the restrictions. But that sort of re-enacting is not what we do when we offer bread and wine at Mass. Some of the symbolism doesn’t match up with that. Take for example the liquid used. We use wine because that is what Jesus used and it has to be alcoholic for that reason. The priest, you will have noticed at the Offertory adds water. This isn’t for fear that God’s people will get tipsy if it’s not watered down! A prayer is to be said as the water is poured in: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” We’re offering a mystery and entering in to a mystery. This is signified again by the words the priest says as soon as he’s consecrated the Bread and the Wine, making present Christ’s Body and Blood: he says, “The mystery of faith.” Mystery cannot be understood, nor recalled. It can only be entered in to. This leads us on to the second question: what are we commemorating then? The Mass is not a commemoration of the Last Supper otherwise Jesus would have said, “Do this in memory of tonight, I never want you forget it.” The Passover commemorated an event. The Mass is a memorial of the mystery of Christ’s life: do this in memory of me. There are lots of elements and moments of Christ’s life we might like to focus on. His birth at Bethlehem, His healing ministry in Galilee, His transfiguration up Mount Tabor, His teaching on the Mount of the Beatitudes. This Memorial, however, involves His Body and His Blood. It’s an odd combination. On the one hand it is to indicate the whole of a human life. Jesus uses it to mean as much when he says to Peter after his profession of faith, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,” (St Matthew 16:17). Flesh and blood here means a person, anyone. When we offer Christ’s Body and Blood, we are therefore offering His full person, divinity and humanity. But to separate out the elements – Body and Blood – is something that only really happens in death. The Body is broken irretrievably, the Blood flows out for longer than it can bear. St John introduces His account of the Last Supper with the beautiful phrase: “Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” The mystery of Christ we most clearly enter in to at the Mass is the mystery of the Cross. He’s about to die and shows His love by providing for the Church a mystery to enter into. Through it we proclaim His death.Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory —Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.May the music of Christ’s death and resurrection; and His words of healing and forgiveness which we recall when we celebrate Mass, not just be recollections of a meal we weren’t even at, but fresh encounters with the living God whom we must loyally serve.