Happy Easter to All!!!
It’s a truly beautiful time of year and reason for celebration. I love learning about the Savior’s last week of life, because I feel it is so telling of his character and what it means for us. And with Easter being tomorrow, I thought that I would take some of the new things that I’ve found and apply them to my thought process as I take the sacrament and think about the meaning behind the holiday.
First off, I learned something really cool in my Book of Mormon class that just kind of blew me away. In 3 Ne. Chapter 18, Christ institutes the sacrament among the Nephites after his resurrection. As He blesses the bread, he asks them to partake of it in remembrance of His body - which he “has shown unto you.” As He blesses the wine, he asks them to partake in “remembrance of [his] blood, which [he] shed for you.” Now, why might these phrasings and wordings be important?
For starters, let me start with my original viewpoint of the sacrament - I tended to focus more on Christ dying for me. He gave up His body, he was whipped and bled from every pore in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the symbolism behind those things in His life is what I tended to focus on. However, when you look at how Christ administers the sacrament to the Nephites, the meaning behind the words takes on a bit of a different meaning. Christ shows His resurrected body to the Nephites. That isn’t the body of His crucifixion, but rather a resurrected, glorified version of himself. This was revolutionary to me - it is an aspect of the atonement that we all get to have hope in; our own resurrected bodies. This is one things that Christ did for us. It is a lot more joyful to remember what he did. Again, as he talks about the blood he has shed, we remember that resurrected bodies don’t have blood - another wonderful aspect of the happy and joyful nature of the Atonement. I had never thought about the meaning that the sacrament could have, and it’s something that I definitely want to implement as I take it every week. As I’m repenting of my sins, I can recall what was overcome for me instead of the suffering involved. And in all honesty, I think the gospel works much better this way. It fits with the happy and joyful nature behind everything that Heavenly Father is about, and the love that is behind everything that happens. I love the gospel! Remember that this lovely Easter Sunday.
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