The new year is well under way and Christmas seems no more than a distant memory. I recall its warmth and joy ... but only just; there seems a fog between even the recent past and today.
If remembering events from a month ago is difficult, how can a modern person ‘remember’ Jesus and first-century Palestine? Yet that’s precisely what we say we do in the liturgy and in life?.
The Jews of Jesus’ time often spoke of ‘remembering’ but it was never as a mere act of the mind. It was never an occasional act of “Oh yes, …” but an attempt to immerse self fully into the story or incident to be remembered. It required a good sense of imagination so, for example, to remember the story of Jesus in the wilderness required imagining self living alongside Jesus in his agonies of temptation. It required an active imagining of self looking at Jesus as he spoke with famished lips, and saw visions of angels or devils.
A life spent remembering Jesus in this ancient sense will acquire an empathy with Jesus that cannot be gained elsewhere. It will seek to identify with Jesus and thence follow him.
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