Peace be with you.
Have you ever been sitting with some friends and started telling stories about the past and had a flood of memories come to mind? I’m guessing we all have. Sometimes they’re positive and sometimes they’re negative. It tends to happen for me when I get together with college friends. We start to talk about a choir tour trip or a class we had together with a particularly enigmatic professor or a rooming situation and memories come flooding back.
I have a feeling, this is how the scriptures were written. With all due respect to the Chosen’s theory that St. Matthew and St. John were both writing down things as they happened in the field, the Gospels feel more to me like reflections on past events than they do a blow-by-blow description of an event as it is happening. Which is okay. In fact, contrary to our contemporary truth that the farther away you are from an event the less you remember details, I think that the disciples and we, their successors, needed some time to reflect on what just happened to understand it.
In the second reading, St. Paul twice quotes Jesus saying of the bread and wine that we are to “Do this in remembrance of me.” There have been entire books written about the word remembrance as it is used in these sentences. When we think of remembrance or remembering things, we tend to think of calling to mind a memory of something that happened in the past. The trouble with that understanding is that we have undoubtedly had an experience of remembering something completely different than someone else. This may in part have to do with the differences between a society that is bombarded with information from screens and a society that relied on telling stories for entertainment. It’s harder to remember details when we have a million of them being thrown at us all day long. However, another part is a difference in understanding what a memory is.
As I said before, we think of remembering as a calling to mind a memory that is restricted to our mind. However, for St. Paul and Jesus, a memory is a calling to the present of something that happened in the past. It’s closer to but not exactly like what I was talking about when I began my homily. Oftentimes, when I find myself talking to college friends about the past, it feels like I’m transported back to that time. I can remember the feelings I had at the time and even start to feel them. I cringe when I remember some dumb thing I said or did. I have to check myself if I am reminded of a time when I was arrogant or cocksure. I feel happy and ecstatic when I remember a really fun or exciting experience.
At the end of the Second Reading, St. Paul clarifies that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” It’s not that we are expected to proclaim the death of the Lord after you receive communion, though that is undoubtedly true too. It’s that, by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Lord, you are proclaiming his death until he comes. Jesus called it giving us an example in the Gospel, using it in reference to his act of humbly washing his disciples’ feet. It’s like we’re setting aside the mundane world in which we live and entering into the world of Jesus, entering into the very life of Jesus. It’s all a gift to us, not something we could ever earn or deserve. This is really his body, blood, soul, and divinity offered to us to bring to mind and enter into his life. It is the same body and blood that was shed for us on the cross fulfilling the Old Testament sacrifice of the Lamb. And, whenever we gather here, we proclaim to the world its importance.
That’s the reminder for tonight, the importance of gathering in service to our local community. We have been doing that on Fridays in a special way at our fish fries, in loving service to this community. We can do it when we serve at St. Vincent De Paul or Metro Catholic Outreach or other places. But we primarilly do it when we gather for Mass. Is Mass a place for you to serve the Lord by proclaiming his death or is it more of performance meant to serve your pleasure?
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