Apologetics: The Mass and Back to the Future

 

I was recently visiting a friend. He was just finishing  the movie “Back to the Future.” I asked if I was disturbing him? He said “ No, I  already watched it yesterday. I was just re-watching it.” He turned the sound off as it continued to visually play in the background.  We had a conversation as the movie played. Just random stuff.

He is a pretty strong Protestant, and religious topics come up a lot between us, but this time, not so much. As we continued to talk, he noticed a part of the movie– now the TV was playing “Back to the Future, part II”, which followed right after the first one.

I remembered the first one pretty well, seeing it a few times in the cinema, in my youth. But the second movie, I think, I watched once on TV, and remembered hardly anything. He filled me in what had happened because it was nearing the end and approaching the climax. We both started to watch together with sound as Doc explains the TIMELINE.

It all gets very complicated, but one thing that is constant in all three movies is the town square location, with the clock, and the people involved. All of the story  is dependent on this small period of time for the salvation of the world. As he explained, all the points of the films were tied to this one event; it dawned on me that this was similar to Holy Week or more acutely The Last Supper, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday and the Mass.

I said these movies are like the Catholic Mass. He asked how? I said that it is one event that changes the course of history and  the Mass makes it present to us now, and we in a way also go back in time spiritually to the Last Supper, Death and Resurrection. He didn’t get it and I wasn’t really able to explain it well.

So I thought I would try to organize my thoughts in this post. The Time Machine (the Delorean Car) is like the Mass, making 1955, in the movie, present to the past and future, except the Mass is making 33AD present to us in the future.


The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1363) explains it better than I could and more educationally :
“In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them”

From what I can gather the  Hebrew word for “memorial” is “zikaron'' the root word of ''memory” used in the Jewish Passover. It was translated from the Hebrew to the Greek word “anamnesis,” in ''do this in memory of me” 1 Corinthians 11:24 and Luke 22:19.  “Zikaron” has a similar connotation to the Greek word  “anamnesis” used by Paul and Luke above for “memory”.

In Ancient Greek  “anamnesis” was more than mental recollection. It meant to make present.  The Hebrew word “zikaron' has a similar understanding. The Hebrew word is "a sacrificial term that brings the offerer into remembrance before God, or brings God into favorable remembrance with the offerer" (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia).

The liturgical Passover celebration was believed by the Jews  to involve a participation in the original exodus from Egypt. This commemoration is a mystical happening, crossing both time and space.

“Do this in memory of me”  connotes a participation in a past event, allowing us to be present in the past, even though we are now in the future – thus my “Back to the Future” metaphor. Mass is more than just a simple mental recollection of that event.

I think St. Paul agrees when he writes 1 Corinthians 10:16-17:

“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?
And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf.”

St. Paul is saying we are participating in the blood and body of Christ. There is one “loaf” that is Christ. The bread is his body and we commune in this one body.

All of time is centered on Jesus Christ and His death on the cross, and resurrection, like the clock tower in the movie. The Old Testament looks forward to Him, and we, in the future, look back to Him, as the source of all Grace. And like a good movie, a liturgy helps us to recall thoughts and feelings; we "relive" the experience. For my friend there was no surprises for him, in the movie, but he had pleasure is my experiencing it.

I think Christ may get the same enjoyment by sharing His Passion, Death and Resurrection with us through the Mass, like my friend shared the movie with me. But the Mass is far greater than a movie, but the real event, mystically present, and we mystical present in Jesus eyes as God. He could see us from the cross.