When we remember, we leave the present for the past. To say
it better, we bring the past into the present and give it life alongside the
tangible realities we are compelled to consider. In our memory of a loved one
we choose to relate to him/her even though, since he is not present, we need
not relate to him. Not physical presence but love leads us to live with this remembered
person even in her absence. When the love is strong, the memory of this absent
person may be more dear and more real than the reality of those who are
present. Memory is sometimes the difference between life and death, between
hope and despair, between strength for another day and the collapse of all
meaning. Our memory of another confers the present upon him, gives him further
life in our life, and keeps a moment of the past from drifting away or fading
into death. We are fed and nourished by communion of life in which two lives
intersect in memory and merge into common experience. No lover forgets. No
beloved is forgotten. The memory of love is life; the memory of another becomes
our selves.
Pentecost was God’s coming to strengthen the fidelity of a community to the memory of Jesus…The memory of Jesus is now preserved in the Spirit and through a community’s faith, with all the attendant mysteries of bread and wine, revelation and tradition. So when the communion of believers remembers Jesus, when the bride
is alive with the thought of her Spouse, Christ is present. Jesus is brought
into the present with his grace by the force of memory in the power of the
Spirit…The gift of the Sprit is fidelity to the memory of life’s mystery and
confidence in the mystery of its future.
(Anthony Padovano, Dawn
without Darkness)
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