In this month of remembering, author Dinah Chapman Simmons explains how Scripture invites us to remember, and how that remembering makes us part of a community.
November is a month of remembrance. November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada; in the U.S., Veterans Day is observed. The Church also celebrates special remembrance days in November: All Saints and All Souls. Many parishes have a memorial Mass and a Book of Remembrance.
Memory is a great gift. As we age, we learn not to take it for granted! Memory connects us to so many people and experiences. Like a family album or scrapbook, the Bible can help us to remember and connect with past events and people. The Mass also is an opportunity to remember and connect. In the Bible and the Mass, memory connects us and gives us a sense of identity.
As a child at Mass, I was amazed to hear people whispering the words of the Eucharistic Prayer; they knew it by heart. This knowing by heart is a deep remembrance: not mindless repetition but something that lives in us, something that becomes part of us. What have you learned in this deep way of remembrance? Bible verses? Hymns? They have helped shape who you are.
Scripture urges us to look back, individually and collectively, and remember God’s saving deeds. This remembering gives us confidence and hope for the future. We can also look back to face our sin and all we’ve suffered, to deal with the past, with God’s help, so we can move forward.
The Israelites were told over and over to remember God and God’s saving deeds, as in these instructions from Moses to the people:
[Y]ou shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien. . . . When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us . . . we cried to the Lord. . . . The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm . . .” (Deut 26:5-8)
Generation after generation repeated these words, long after those who had been rescued from Egypt were dead. In remembrance, new generations entered that reality as God’s saving deeds were made present for them. This remembrance shaped them and formed them as God’s people.
This deeply biblical understanding of remembrance informs our understanding of the Eucharist as remembrance that makes present. As we remember Jesus’ death and resurrection in the Eucharist, these saving deeds are made present to us—and we are made present to them. Memory connects us not only spiritually and emotionally, but physically: real presence.
This is the height of remembrance. But all memory can connect us through time and space, to God and to one another, helping to form our shared identity, helping us be grateful and trust in God’s goodness.
Interestingly, Scripture also asks God to remember us. This means much more than simply wanting God to notice our existence; God is asked to remember us with kindness, love, and mercy. Scripture reminds God’s people over and over that God remembers and saves them. The universe is big, and we are small, but God is “mindful”:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps 8:3-4)
Like the psalmist, we marvel that God sees and cares for us. We carry this hope, always remembering, so that even in our darkest hours, we have confidence to say, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
