That is the title of a song some years ago. It is a rather beautiful thought.

This is the month of the Holy Rosary, if you are cotton to that sort of reckoning.  We’ll celebrate the feast this week. We are dealing here with memory. Memory is a significant area of our Faith.

In the Rosary, for example, we remember. We recall, in the Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, His Presentation in the Temple, His being lost and found. In the Luminous Mysteries introduced by John Paul the Great, we remember: His Baptism in the Jordan, the Wedding at Cana, the Sending out of the Apostles, the Transfiguration on the Mount, the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. And in the Sorrowful Mysteries, we remember: the Agony in Gethsemani, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross and, finally, His Death on It. And in the Glorious set: the Rising, the Ascension, the Coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the Assumption of Our Lady and Her Coronation in Heaven. A memory trip against the repeated “Ave Marias”.

How often do we not say the Creed together, Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed, summarizing the major truths of our Faith, calling them to mind?

In the Angelus, morning, noon and night, we remember the Incarnation of Our Lord and Savior.

When St. Ignatius devised the Spiritual Exercises, the first retreat, he spent 30 days going over the truths of the Faith from Adam to the Apocalypse, a tradition carried on in the 10-day, 7-day, 3-day retreat, the Day of Recollection, stressing some aspect of the Faith: the Creed, the Commandments, the Sacraments, the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, the Beatitudes, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Fruits. We make the Way of the Cross and so recall the pilgrims to Jerusalem doing the same. And most of all, the perfection of all, in the year of the Church, from Advent to Christ the King, when we not only remember, but in which we celebrate a participation in the timeless events of our salvation, expressed most dynamically in the Mass:“Do this in memory of Me.” Here we enter into the mysteries, remembering them indeed, but also entering into them in the mystic dimension of prayer.

Memory thus plays a major role in the living of our Faith: “Do this in memory of Me.” We do not want to forget. We pray. We recall. We remember and so keep faith alive, and hope, and love. “Remember me as loving you.” Otherwise, for sure, we forget. We permit worldly concerns, deliberations and occupations to dominate us, overwhelm us. And in the clamor of an exciting existence, we forget. And so live in a land of oblivion. We don’t remember any more.

Indeed, we can see the whole monastic enterprise as a work of memory. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the Rule we keep, the chapter, the cloister, the refectory, not to say the church, the wall that runs around the whole place, the whole scene is to remind us:  who we are, what we do, what we are here for.

In other words, memory is, in some way, an exercise of our faith. We don’t want to forget that He loves us and we Him.

A man carries photos of his wife and children in his wallet because he loves them and likes to be reminded of them. On the least provocation he will take out his wallet and show you his wife and children because he loves them. And enjoys the memory of them.

The monk finds a special joy in the psalter, all the associations that come with their use day after day, year after year, the tapestry we weave over time, ever old, ever new. As the “Ave Marias” form the background of the Mysteries of the Rosary, so psalms form the background of the mysteries of the Faith we celebrate in the seasons, the feasts, the memories. Hence it is true to say, they are never the same, for the scene, the situation, is never the same. Hence in no way is it the same day after day. It is never the same, anymore than this Christmas will be like last Christmas, this Fall like last Fall. It is through memory that we enter into the depth of life, taste its significance, embrace the world in love.

Amen.