Saturday, June 10, 2006

Memory Serves

In my talk on Eucharistic spirituality, I mentioned that "memory" is one of the most important words in the liturgical vocabulary. Some things can only yield their full meaning in memory. In that, they are a bit like the Paschal Mystery: Even though it took place in history, in time and space, it is just too big to fit. You need to enter it again and again through memory--or through memorial (if you want to be technical). 
That's what the past two weeks (well, the two weeks prior to Monday) was like. There were simply too many places and experiences packed together in those two weeks for two weeks to be adequate to contain it all. We will be going "back" to Rome and Spain again and again, receiving the grace and the meaning that was there for us in events that (in the temporal order of things) are "past." In memory, the past is not "over and done," but open.

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