Memorial Day

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 27, 2005

Since 1868, Americans have come together at the end of May to remember and honor those who have given their lives to protect and defend us, who have paid the supreme sacrifice so that we might be free.

This is a weekend in which we pray to the Lord that all those whose names have been written heroically with blood in the annals of our nation may likewise have their names inscribed indelibly in the Book of Life.

This year our prayer for them takes place within the context of a much more ancient Memorial Day on which we remember the One whose sacrifice gives meaning to all others.

On Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus - the body and blood willingly given and shed for us on the victorious battlefield of Calvary. On the night before Jesus put the words of consecration into body language, he took the elements of the Jewish Passover ritual -the unleavened bread, the four cups of wine, the unblemished Lamb - and gave them new meaning and an entirely new substance.

Moreover, he took the Jewish notion of memorial- zikkaron, the idea that when the Jews celebrated the Passover meal they were not only recalling the events of the great exodus from slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land but somehow mysteriously entering into them - and made it the foundational idea of the new and eternal covenant.

When Jesus instructed and ordained his apostles to "do this in memory of me," he was providing, in the Mass, the means by which we would be able to participate - "live" so to speak - in the eternal events of the Upper Room, Calvary and the empty tomb. The Mass is the memorial in which we not only recall what Jesus did, but share in it. Through the Eucharist, we enter, in time, into the eternal passover from death to life, from the slavery to sin to the eternal promised land.

The early Church referred to this living memorial by the Greek word anamnesis, which contains the same idea as the Hebrew zikkaron, but adds something else. It means literally "unforgetting" (precisely, "un-amnesia"). It points to the obvious but hard truth that so often we can have amnesia concerning all that God has done and continues to do for us.

We can forget that Jesus, the King of Kings, God himself, is truly present in a tabernacle close by. We can forget how much love God showed us in becoming man, in dying for us, and especially in remaining with us under the humble appearances of bread and wine. We can forget that the Eucharist is the single greatest gift we can receive in the world and therefore needs to be, as Pope John Paul II said, the "magnetic pole" of our entire life.

Corpus Christi is a day on which we're called to stop forgetting all those realities, and, with our memories refreshed, to begin again to act in accordance with them.

If Pope Benedict were coming to your parish on Sunday afternoon and wanted to talk to you personally, would you arrange your weekend to take advantage of the privilege?

Well, I've got even greater news for you: the Pope's Boss is coming to your Church on Sunday afternoon to spend intimate time with you in Eucharistic adoration.

The question is whether each of us will resist the ingrained tendency to forget that the Eucharist really is Jesus Christ. If we do resist that bad habit, then we will make even more effort to spend time with Jesus than we would with his earthly vicar.

Likewise, Bishop Coleman will be taking our divine Master into the streets of Fall River on Sunday afternoon. Two-thousand years ago, the ancient Jews used to crowd the streets when Jesus passed by just to be near him. They used to lay down their cloaks as he passed by. If we Catholics can stop forgetting Jesus' real presence long enough, the Corpus Christi procession on Sunday should be like the first Palm Sunday!

In his last book, Memory and Identity, published just before his death, Pope John Paul II said that the Church is the "living memory of Christ." That memory, he says, is accomplished through the Eucharist, by which the Church helps the whole world remember Christ.

But the Pope tells us that Eucharist also makes us mindful of someone else: "Christians, as they celebrate the Eucharist in 'memory' of their Master, continually discover their own identity."

The Eucharist reveals our identity by showing us how much we're loved by God, that he would give us his own Son to be our very food. It also reveals to us who were called to be: to love God and others as Christ has loved us, saying by word and action, "this is my body, my blood, my sweat, my tears, my life... given out of love for you!"

Corpus Christi is the memorial day on which not only do we stop ignoring the amazing reality that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, but rediscover our own identity by entering into this living ever-present and always-transforming covenant of love.

May the Lord help us never to forget either again!

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.