The city that I live in was founded in 1943 for the purpose of building an atom bomb. Various movies have shared Hollywood’s moral opinions on that endeavor, none of which are very surprising. When I moved here in 1989, I met a good number of the “Class of ’43,” people who were here during the war with rich memories and stories. They were less than sanguine about Hollywood’s tales. “How will I be remembered?” was an unspoken thought among many of them. I frequently fell into conversations that re-hashed the end of World War II and arguments for why the bombs were necessary. I also witnessed a flurry of projects across the city that sought to remember the names of those scientific pioneers. Indeed, the entire city has now been named a national park (Manhattan Project National Historical Park). I’m certain that other groups at other times and places have clamored for the same remembrance. However, in time, they will be forgotten.
Memory is a shifting thing. I recall the first time I heard my mother share something as happening to her that, in fact, happened to me (if I’m remembering correctly). My older brother and I, when swapping stories, frequently discover that our memories of the same events are different. I’m certain that he is wrong. The truth is, we can only distinguish a false memory from a real memory with great difficulty – we experience them in the same way.
The Christian life is not built on memory, at least, not in the sense in which the word is popularly used. For even our recall of historical moments, such as the death and resurrection of Christ, are not an exercise of historical memory. Indeed, none of us who hear that story recited in the Divine Liturgy were actually there when the events took place in history. We are not engaging in that sort of memory. It would be impossible. It would also be mere memorialism.
What is taking place is far more astounding.
The classical Christian faith is decidedly about the end of all things. Christ teaches us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” In saying this, He gives expression to the great paradox and mystery of our faith. We pray for that which shall be to be that which is. He Himself is key, for He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” and yet He is among us. The disciples said, “Show us the Father.” He replied, ” “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” He does not claim to be the Father, but rather that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
In the Divine Liturgy, we declare, “You called us from nonbeing into being, and when we had fallen away, You raised us up again, and did not cease to do all things until You had brought us up to heaven, and had bestowed upon us Your kingdom which is to come.” In the Liturgy itself, we do not “remember” in the historical sense. Instead, we “do this for the remembrance of Me,” an act of anamnesis in which ask for God make that which was, and that which shall be, to be present in our midst. The sacrifice on the Cross is not re-enacted, but is made present in our midst, the Body and Blood of Christ.
This “mystical” understanding is a declaration of how things truly are. The “End” is that towards which everything is moving and being drawn. It literally “defines” us. It is also more than the outcome of things that have gone before. The End (Christ our God) is the cause of all things, the purpose, and reason for their being.
We are eschatological beings, created according to the end for which we are intended. Memory, rightly understood, plays an important role in manner of existence. The thief on the Cross prays to Christ, “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” This is not a cry for a human memorial, a plaque marking the place and date of his passing. This is a stretching forth towards that which alone can rescue his existence. It is similar to the Orthodox prayer, “May his memory be eternal!”
As an older man, I see my past slipping away. My memory seems fine from a medical point-of-view, but the truth is that we only remember moments of our past. Those moments are often sustained by photographs, souvenirs, and stories. Indeed, the stories have a striking way of mis-remembering, the story supplanting the event itself. Tell the story wrong for enough times and you come to believe it yourself. The cult of the past is often a covenant with a lie.
Modernity’s cult of the future is equally misleading. We are not creating the future nor is the past the enemy of the future. In the End, what we think of as the future will be nothing more than dust and ashes.
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:10–13)
The End is working within us, creating new heavens and a new earth. Our “remembering” in the Liturgy is nothing less than calling down into our midst that very thing. It is in that light that we forgive one another – everyone for everything. We love one another even as Christ loves us. We invoke the peace of Christ which is the Kingdom that is to come.
Remember us, O Lord!
“Beloved, now we are children of God;
and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be,
but we know that when He is revealed,
we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2)
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