After a particularly enjoyable lunch round of reminiscing with one of my brothers the other day, he noted that we are of the age now that we talk about the past a whole lot more than we do the future. And he’s right. Time itself lets us know there is a whole lot more of the past to be talked about. And the future, when you come right down to it, is mostly speculation, isn’t it?
Not so, the past. Oh, we may have different views of it. but we do know something real happened and we recall some of what we felt about it at the time and how we feel about it now in retrospect. And, of course, without having been significantly affected by indelible, even haunting, bygone impressions, there can be no reminiscence.
Usually, the way into a grove of memory is through seemingly insignificant details, appurtenant scenes and settings, or even a mosaic of images having risen up from the blurry depths of the soul. An intimately personal understanding of the past may also manifest itself in the practicing of and the honor we pay to tradition. G.K. Chesterton famously referred to tradition as the “democracy of the dead.”
And so, as my brother and I kept on with our stories, most of which each of us had either told or heard a hundred times. Amid the head-shaking laughter, the good-natured ribbing, the still, sad recognitions, and the deep appreciations, we came to realize that so many of the characters, stars or supporting actors of our tales, are no longer on the planet.
Perhaps the sign of a good life is how many people we really miss. Gabriel Marcel once said, “You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die.” People really do live on in our hearts. And my brother and I spoke of them.
I sometimes wonder just how important my children’s memories will be to them. How much of what Mom and Dad laid before them in their childhoods or who we were to them and with them will re-enter their minds and, hopefully, bolster them when they need it? Will the casual intimacies of family life bear fruit? Will devout practice of the faith reawaken a hunger in their souls? Will old photographs on the top of the piano or sonnets left to them or songs my wife and I sang cause them to reminisce with each other and hunger for God?
I certainly hope so.
What about our faith in these godless times? When even our own Catholic laity and clergy, too, can publicly thwart and privately circumvent basic tenets of the faith with no ecclesial (or earthly) repercussions, what are we to do? Will the truths we know, written in the human heart and sanctioned by Holy
Mother Church, inhabit our children and reappear to guide their thoughts and actions and to matter in their lives? Will First Communions come to mind?
What of catechisms in the stained glass, Advent wreaths, Good Fridays, midnight Masses, rosaries prayed in living rooms, silent penances, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament? Will the patrons and patronesses of our children rise up in them like incense to protect them from a world where religious observance and devotion is quickly becoming passe?
We know how destructive bad memories can be. I hope good memories can counterbalance the spirits of my offspring in such a way as to bring them and our other loved ones a measure of harmony and peace.
A friend once told me it was OK to look back, but not to stare. Our memories should have a purpose in our present lives. If I recall having been forgiven for missteps in my past, chances are it will be much easier for me to forgive someone else if I am wronged. Many of the traditional values we believe in are mocked, ignored or suppressed by the culture. And yet, like Christ’s disciples pulling in their nets from the sea, we haul around with us our cherished memories that sustain us.
Faith itself is remembrance, and it does not exist in a vacuum. We don’t just have faith; we have faith in something and Someone. A Christian has faith in the Person of Jesus Christ, in all He taught and in His ultimate sacrifice on the cross. His birth, life, death and resurrection are recollections we as Christians contemplate daily in word and deed.
Especially as Catholics, we know the Last Supper to be the largest collective memory humankind has ever known. Jesus broke bread and offered wine and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And in this very second, somewhere on the planet, in a basilica or a hut, a priest en persona Christi is saying the words and the Host and Chalice are being held up to heaven. The theological term “anamnesis” represents this sacred remembering. In the Eucharist, in the Body He walked around in, in the voice He instructed with, in the hands He healed with and in the tears He cried, the past, miraculously and intimately, becomes present. The sanctified memory, the re-presentation, is who Our Savior is and, therefore, who we aspire to be.
It is our blessed lot to remember. I imagine my great-great-grandfather, in County Donegal, slipping a rosary into a vest pocket, his clothes in a tablecloth tied to a hazel stick, kissing his mother goodbye as he left the land he loved. A memory of the figure upon that pocketed cross squeezed tightly by a hand in a determined fist, re-presented at every Mass ever, was passed to his son and his son and his son and me.
Sometimes we remember way beyond what our minds can grasp. We go to some place other than the past. My brother and I recalled our schoolboy mischief, bicycles and basketball; first kisses and first loves; protectors and storytellers; our post-war parents and Benedictine pastors and long-gone best friends. And, too, Christ among us, all the while, remembered and remembering – too beautiful to die.
Fred Gallagher is an author and editor-in-chief with Gastonia-based Good Will Publishers Inc.