Ancient Church

As we ordinarily think of it, to remember something simply means to bring it to mind. It is a fairly passive act: “Do you remember the time Aunt Claire…”. We think about the event (assuming we remember it at all), but the memory does not become a part of the present. Looked at in that way, the good thief’s request of Jesus on the Cross, that He remember him when He comes into his kingdom, is poignant at best, silly at worst. Would Jesus, having entered paradise, simply comment to a passing angel: “Do you remember that guy on the cross next to me? Dismas was his name. Pretty nice guy.” That remembrance involves more than passivity, however, is made plain by the answer Christ gives to Dismas: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” So what is remembrance? How can it be more than the mere recollection that we are familiar with?

We can find a clue in our own lives. We have all had this happen: unasked and uncalled, a faint scent reaches us. It is something that calls us back to childhood, or to some earlier stage of our existence. For a moment, it all returns to us. Not the simple memory, but the feel, the sense, the taste, the sound. We remember being small and living in a place long gone, among people who have passed on. The vision is so sharp, so clear, that for that instant all that goes with it returns and exists in the present moment. The tears and the joy, the grief and the ecstasy; all are mingled in an irreducible combination of past and present, of pain and of wonder.

In that experience, we can begin to understand what remembrance means in the divine economia. It is often said that if God were not to remember us, the world would cease to exist, and the universe would return to its pre-Creation emptiness. By His recollection of us - a memory born of love — all things continue. Linear time has no effect on God. He lives and exists in the past, the present and the future, without distinction. For Him to remember something is both to experience it and anticipate it, every bit as much as it is to recall it. Divine remembrance is active. It is in and of itself both creative and life engendering.

This active participation extends to humans. The Jews, long before the Incarnation, began the tradition of praying Blessings throughout the day. For example, upon fully awakening he or she would say “Blessed be thou, JHWH, our God. King of the Universe, who restorest the souls to the dead corpses.” He straightens up: “Blessed be thou…who exaltest them that are lowly.” Upon looking out, “Blessed be thou…who openest the eyes of the blind.” Upon dressing: “Blessed be thou…who clothest the naked.” And so it goes throughout the whole day. No act, no occasion, remains unblessed, nor remains, as it were, non-sacramental, for the Jew constantly reminds himself that all of life is infused with the rule and command of God.

The early Christian community continued this sense of remembrance, and it remains strong today in the
Orthodox Church, and particularly in the celebration of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not simply a recollection of the sacrifice of Christ, or of His great love. It is instead a tangible, ongoing act, of a sacrifice that never ends and a love that never dies. Only in this sense does the admonition of the Apostle Paul make sense, the call to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. In every Liturgy, we stand in the presence of the ongoing sacrifice, of the eternal love. There is no history. All of time is bound up in each and every moment, and we are called to participate, to receive and to offer.

Remembrance is nothing without action. Remembrance is nothing without response. Life without remembrance of that sort is a dead life. That is the problem with sola fide. Faith alone lives in the present only. As Christians, however, we are called to live in all ages, to remembrance that is a vital and living force.