Do this in memory of me

Do you ever wonder why are we here? As we have entered this blessed time of Lent let me offer a couple reflections on memory...

The Greek word for truth, aletheia, is a negated from of the verb translated "to forget"; knowing the truth means to stop forgetting.

Robert Louis Wilken wrote: Religion does not exist without culture and culture is a carrier of religion... Without memory a people have no sense of who they are. ...if a society loses all memory of its Christian traditions, there is a real question whether those things that make western civilization unique, e.g. human rights, freedom of religion, will endure.


Mary Regina Morrell writes:  “Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.” ~ Corrie ten Boom ... We live in an age that embraces the maxim, “Have it your way!” - our houses, our cars, our meals, our jobs, our clothes, and even our memories, are subject to manipulation until they are exactly as we feel they should be.

Maybe we should be more conscious of those things that steal away our memory.  What steals your memory away?

A memory exercise - consider the root of things. True is derived from the same root (deru-) that gave rise to "troth," "truth," "trust," and "true" in English.

The waybread that fills us

REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE (9:11b-17)


The reading for today’s Solemnity of Corpus Christi reminds us of what the renowned English author, J.R.R. Tolkien, expressed in his celebrated The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this fiction, hobbits Frodo and Sam were given the task of destroying the powerful but evil One Ring. They had to go through the barren paths of Middle Earth in order to reach the place where the One Ring was forged and where it could only be destroyed—Mount Doom in Mordor. The Elvin queen Galadriel gave them lembas bread for the long journey. Tolkien explains that "this waybread of the elves had a potency that increased as the travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods... It fed the will, and it gave strength... beyond the measure of mortal kind." Tolkien, being a devout Catholic, has partly intimated in his fiction what the Eucharist is for us, Catholics.

Tolkien’s lembas comes to mind when we hear what today’s liturgy provides us in the sequence before the Gospel proclamation: "Lo! The angel’s food is given to the pilgrim who has striven." Similar to Tolkien’s bread, the Eucharist is food for us, pilgrims journeying in the barrenness of this life towards the superabundance of eternal life.

From Fr. David O. Reyes, Jr.

It Is All About Him

And to affirm Aramis's superb reflection on love, marriage, and looking deeply into the beloved's eyes to see Christ reflected there, I remind you, gentle reader, that our Almighty God knew that we would need - absolutely need - His Son Incarnate, the Word made flesh (Jn 1,14). This "scandal of particularity" began with His Chosen People, the Jews to whom He gave the Law. Then the fulfillment of the Law was born of Mary, our Savior and our God.

Secondly, I recently viewed the History Channel's Time Machine: The Real Face of Jesus? on researchers' efforts to show us a 3-D image of Our Lord from the Shroud of Turin. It's not a bad effort: the guy's pompadour and the ridiculous incoherent speculation about Gnosticism just about turned me off, but the pay-off at the end is worth the wait. And the physicist's hypothesis about the edge of the Shroud is nye-on breathtaking. That's all I'll say ...

Thirdly, the Vatican Information Service announces that the Holy Father's second volume of Jesus of Nazareth has gone to the publisher.

Remember and never forget: it is all about Jesus. All of it - our Judge and our Hope, Who will not leave us comfortless and pours out His eucharistic grace through His Church's sacramental life. Deo gratias. +

Remembering that receiving the Eucharist we are incorporated into the work of Christ in history

Pondering Divine Mercy Sunday (and terms like mercy & forgiveness, and the other key element, hearing the cock-crow) I am brought back to a favorite Gil Bailie session, Entering the Biblical Story at the Eucharistic Table . (Make sure to link and read the entire transcript.) 

It is very important to remember Jesus didn’t say, ‘take this and figure it out.’ He said, ‘take it and eat it.’ There is a huge mystery in the Eucharist, but it is I think, the mystery of our induction into the body of Christ - into the communion of saints – into the work of Christ in history...

For much of my presentation so far I have talked about story, recovering the story in scriptural terms, and of course we have to do that. But there is this place where we actually enter the story. We don’t just learn the story, and say the story, but we become actors in the story; we begin to perform the story. And I don’t think we should be too self-conscious about that kind of language. Refer to the unbelievable central passage from Paul, “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me.” We have to take that at face value. One has to say about that what Flannery O’Connor said about the Eucharist, if it is just a symbol, the hell with it. It is not just a symbol. Christians are here to be incorporated into the work of Christ in history...

We are called to bring forgiveness into the world, being there with people who are suffering from their own unforgivenness and being simply an agent in the presence of whom people can begin to feel forgiveness. Forgiveness is a great mystery; it is not some sanctimonious thing that somebody who has it gives to somebody else. It is a spirit that infects us – it always has an infecting agent. There is always somebody who brings it in and introduces it into a situation of unforgivenness, and it is our Eucharistic responsibility to be about that business. In order to be able to be about such business, we have to experience the kenosis (meaning: a self-emptying) of Christian discipleship. So we take our lives, and this is our supreme privilege, we must not see this as some kind of melodramatic act of renunciation, it is the source of our freedom, to take our lives, thank God for them because it is a gift to us, and break them or let them be broken and give them away. And then, Jesus says, “do THIS in memory of me.” Do what? Do this in memory of me. Not just the gesture, of course we do the gesture; of course the Real Presence, but when Jesus says, do THIS, He is talking of something much more vast then that. He means doing that which the gesture represents – being Christ in the world.

I think that is what drinking the cup is all about, so that sins might be forgiven; so that the knot might be broken; so that the animosity might be absorbed or dispersed; so that the healing and forgiveness might be brought into this situation where unforgivenness is about to get the upper hand...  It is at the Eucharistic table that we receive this gift and are nourished for the journey to go back out into the world and be Eucharistic people, be Christ to the world, absorbing that unforgivenness and being people who are not there on their own, but rather people who are saying with Paul, I live now not I, but Christ lives in me.