YEAR’S END “Should
Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot”
Memories Memories
Memories !
Memory is a complex and powerful
capacity, and it is especially helpful in understanding how Jesus is with us
today. We can treat some memories as “dead and gone”, as events and experiences
that no longer influence us. Catherine Mansfield said, “Make it a rule of life
never to look back. Regret is appalling waste of energy. You cannot build on
it; it is only good for wallowing in.”
Other memories, however, can be treated just the opposite; they can be
“alive and present,” and help shape every moment of our life. As Mr. Bennet advises
his wife in ‘Pride and Prejudice’, “Think only of the past, my dear, as gives
you pleasure.”
We can get a hint of the power of
memory when a sweet fragrance or a popular song, first experienced several
years ago, recreates within us today the emotions associated with the original
experience. The words and melody of a golden oldie can be soothing. If this
power is true of aromas and sounds, how much more true it is of the memory of
important people in our lives. Perhaps we remember a good friend or relative
who died when we were much younger. We never truly forget such people; they
continue to live within us, sometimes in very real and powerful ways. And
speaking about ourselves as a nation
- as a nation we remember our old
leaders and our brave soldiers. A nation that forgets it past has no future and
deserves none!
What about forgiving but not
forgetting? Remembering past hurts is not healthy unless it is the right sort
of memory. A hurting memory, if sweetened by forgiveness, is a golden memory.
In living out Jesus’ Dream, we encounter Jesus in real and powerful ways. They
do more than simply remember or recall a past event. They actually and consciously
make Jesus present again, and everything that is associated with him comes
alive.
Paying due attention to the past does
not mean that we have to be stuck in it. There’s a whole future opening for
you. For example, relationships are about the future. Without forgiveness of
each other, the future is a hard blank wall. If there is anything we want to
leave behind in 2006, let it be our hatreds. Jesus never bore a grudge; you
know what he carried. And while it’s good to ask ourselves the kind of world we
are leaving our children and grandchildren, let us try teaching them to be
grateful: to be grateful to God for the very capacity to praise him, that we
are even able to offer him our thanks. As we say in the 4th. Preface
of the Mass, “You have no need of our praise, yet our very desire to thank you
is itself your gift.” We want to thank God not only for the many good things
that have happened to us in the year just past, but also for the pain and
sadness we could endure by his strength. For example, the people we found
difficult, the burdens we felt unbearable, and deaths of our loved ones, the
days we found unmanageable - these were like so many celestial ‘black
holes’ through which the transcendent Lord came to us. No matter if people
touched our lives positively or negatively, God made his advent through them
all.
Happiness is fleeting and no pain is
permanent, and when they have faded away, there is our loving Creator, the
faithful one who never ever deserted us, Yahweh, the “I am who am”, holding us
fast in his loyal friendship. This is the indefectible Lover we celebrate tonight,
the one who never ever visits us with illness and suffering, but who rather is
present in our trial that he personally carries. For it is the Christ Child who
personally suffers in the body of the sick child, it is the Suffering Messiah
who groans under the agony of the tormented prisoner, the divine Parent who is
heavy with the sadness of the wife and mother over the wayward son or daughter,
or the grieving husband abandoned by his wife, or the child mistreated by
parents.
The dear Lord
stands knee deep in this flood of physical pain and moral shame, with the
reassurance that he alone suffices, and that all will be well and all manner of
thing will be well. He tells us that our passing joys and pains are symbols and
reminders of our creaturehood, that our pains and joys only prove that we are meant for the higher
things that await us, and that we need only believe in his power to deliver the
good things he has promised, namely, community in him and with one another,
when Jesus Christ will hand over all peoples and things to the Father, and God
will be all in all.
Today’s Gospel is about the Word of
God. The most incredible thing in history is that God’s Word, his divine Son,
should become man, live a genuinely human life and die in agony. Jesus Christ
is not an ideal or abstraction, a gaunt empty figure beyond description; but a
person in whom is the fullness of the Godhead, the most beautiful among men,
victor over death and hell. Nothing great does he put us to achieve but to love
him, to be faithful to him and to give faithful testimony to him when the time
comes. His desire is that we should love him, that we love one another for him
and that we believe in his love for us. Jesus dying lives, and living he dies
daily, like the grain of wheat or else he does not take root in our hearts. He
comes into this world, dispossessed infinity, naked and cold, that each of us
may give him something: the universe for his stable, for his manger our hearts
and their warmth.
The author, Vesta Kelly, once said,
“Many people seem to think that the right way to start the New Year is with a
hang-over from the last year.” On our part, as we prepare to end one year and
enter another, we look forward in hope and trust to the Lord who is stronger
than all darkness.
Here is a short passage from Minnie
Louisse Haskins: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ He replied, ‘Go out
into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you
better than a light and safer than a known way.’ ”
May the hand of
Christ bless our year
And the heart of
Christ hold us dear
And all blest and
happy things
Which the love of
Jesus brings
Be ours until
another year is here.
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