
The Risen Lord helped the two men on the Emmaus Road to remember
the prophecies of the Resurrection. The Pope used the image of a road
for Christian life: “Memory is a great grace, and when a Christian has
no memory — this is a hard thing, but it's true — he is not a Christian;
he is an idolater, because he is before a God that has no road, that
does not know how to move forward on the road. Our God is moving forward
on the road with us, He is among us, He walks with us. He saves us. He
makes history with us. Be mindful of all that, and life becomes more
fruitful, with the grace of memory.”
Through the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Mother had the Church’s best
memory, and she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her
heart” (Luke 2:19). Spiritual memory is not like the reminiscence in
which our culture engages on Memorial Day, for instance. That is an
edifying piety, and Cicero said that to forget one’s past is to remain
always a child. But the Holy Trinity transports the soul into an
existence not limited by time. That is why the “memorial of the
Eucharist” is an actual encounter with Christ and not a form of
nostalgia.
We cannot know the full mystery of the Holy Trinity, but unlike
oriental forms of mysticism which would obliterate consciousness
altogether, we are given an eternal memory when we love the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. The Beloved Disciple said, “We love Him because He
loved us” (1 John 4:19). St. John lived until the third year of the
reign of the emperor Trajan, which was 100 A.D. He may have had some
gerontological decay, for he had to be carried about and kept repeating,
“Little children, love one another.” When the Ephesian believers tried
to “be considerate of him” by asking why he said only that, over and
over again, he replied, “Because this is our Lord's command and if you
fulfill this, nothing else is needed.”
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