Warning! This Vincentian Mindwalk may evoke memories and emotions!
Whose death affected you most? For some it will be a family member – mother, father, sister, brother, child, aunt, or uncle. It may have been a childhood friend, a mentor, anyone who impacted your life.
We have all experienced more than one such loss. A part of us died with this person. We cope with this loss in many ways.
In this Vincentian Mindwalk I invite you to explore some of the ways our memories help us understand Jesus asking us to “do this in memory of me.”
Keeping relationships alive
When someone has died have you ever…
- Reread letters or viewed photographs?
- Displayed their photo in a prominent place?
- Treasured or carried some keepsake?
- Done in their honor something they would do?
- Talked with others who miss this person?
- Visit places that remind you of them?
- Visited where they are buried?
These are ways to forge continued connections to the life of the one we love and sustain a continuing bond. The list goes on and on. (See a list of 21 ways to keep someone’s memory alive.)
We seek to remember. We seek ‘continuing bonds’ rather than trying to ‘let go.’
Do this in memory of me
Jesus clearly understood our human need to continue relationships. He understood our need to be with someone who knows us as we are and continues to love us.
Jesus was not just a teacher of an ethical way of life. He was the one who showed us what unconditional love is. Jesus loves each and every one of us – then and now! When he laid down his life for us it was not to satisfy a demanding God but to show what unconditional love looked like.
Jesus’ love showed us how to transform the most horrendous of suffering, humiliation and death nailed to a cross. In his resurrection he showed us that for those who believe, life is not ended but changed. And, that “has not seen nor ear heard what the eternal fullness of life in God is.
There is no doubt that the relationship with Jesus transformed people. Feeling his love, they literally dropped their ”nets” to be with him… and wanted to be with him always. Yet they were slow to understand just how radical his love was. Jesus died to teach us that, just as he loved us and forgave us, he wanted us to love ourselves and one another.
So, he left us the ultimate memorial of a family gathered in celebration of love. He spelled out very explicitly that he wanted us to love with a “foot-washing” kind of love. “Do you understand what I have done?” Then love one another as I have loved you!
Catholics believe and pray at a funeral mass, “Life is changed not ended!” The Eucharist calls us to change our lives today.
Eucharistic renewal
The US Bishops have asked for a three year process of Eucharistic renewal. I am concerned that, in practice, it may focus too much on a merely intellectual assent to doctrine.
I hope we will make the connection with our innate desire to keep our relationship with Jesus alive in a new way.
For starters, I personally believe clergy might help by being better models of “praying” the Eucharist than “saying” Mass. And that will lead us all to pray what we say rather than merely say or listen to words. Eg. Let’s pray rather than just say/hear the words such as let these offerings become for us the Body of Christ.
Keeping Jesus’ memory alive…
- Do I believe in the real love of Jesus for me and my sisters and brothers?
- Have I ever “prayed” with the Eucharistic prayers ?
- Can I model my life on the memory he left us when he us …“Do this in memory of me?”
(PS We could also think about how our not only our liturgies but also our shrines, relics and sacramentals keep his memory alive.)
Click below for an early audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk
My brother used to include in his funeral Mass homilies the notion that we should adopt one of the practices that endeared us to a loved one. I’ve tried to do that with my Mom (and later with an Aunt) who was a faithful birthday and anniversary card sender to all the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews. While it initially seemed like such a simple thing to do, in practice, it was more challenging to continue it on a regular, annual basis. However, recently, a nephew acknowledged how much it meant to him, as a 30+ year old adult, to still receive a birthday card in the mail from a loving aunt and uncle.
Sometimes our recollections of lost loved ones slowly slip into a tendency to glorify their lives. My brothers and sister help in that regard with our stories, honoring our parents and lost siblings but not forgetting that they carried around their fair share of quirkiness and failings. For me, that is a healthy discussion and we need to do it regularly to remind ourselves that they were just like us and had to adapt to the world changing rapidly around them, just as it’s doing to us today.
With your reference to the dialogue at the Last Supper, its easy to flip between (a) criticizing the Apostles for their seeming lack of understanding while Jesus was with them in the flesh and (b) admiring them for how they finally got the message and lived it out mostly at the cost of their lives. Calling them “saints” does them justice but we tend to forget they came from the ranks of “people like us.” Their stories and recollections provide us some guidelines for following in Jesus’ footsteps.
Thanks for the link. Very interesting and practical ways to honor/remember loved ones.
John, I’ve been asking our Father in heaven to give us the Holy Spirit.
I ask, among other things, that the Holy Spirit remind us, especially in our celebrations of the Holy Eucharist, that we live in Jesus Christ by the death of Jesus Christ (we live because he feeds us with his body and blood), and that we ought to die in Jesus Christ by the life of Jesus Christ (since we take him as our nourishment, we are enabled to offer ourselves in love of our brothers and sisters), and that our life ought to be hidden in Jesus Christ and full of Jesus Christ (he invites us, “Come and see,” and being in intimate and silent communion with him is tasting and seeing his goodness, and this delight in this goodness surely cannot but overflow), and that in order to die like Jesus Christ, it is necessary to live like Jesus Christ (he, being our food and drink, will give us strength for the long journey and pilgrimage to the end, to the total surrender that the Eucharist points to and effects in mysterious and inventive way).
Thanks, yes, for Jesus’ “Do this in remembrance of me” and to Vincent’s “Remember that …”.