ACT OF MEMORY
March 2005

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of the films we discussed at Soul Café last year. The film, as you may remember, is about forgetting. It seems a medical doctor has perfected the art of erasing selected parts of your memory and for a price will blow your mind and leave a nice spotless space where a memory had been.

Not all science fiction remains fiction. A New York Times article describes medical research on drugs which intentionally erase selected parts of a person's memory, opening a new branch of medicine called "therapeutic forgetting." The researchers report that in a traumatic situation "when stress hormones like adrenaline . . . are elevated, new memories are consolidated more firmly, which is what makes the recollection of emotionally charged events so vivid, so tenacious, so strong." One can understand why the last days of Jesus and the resurrection on Easter morning were burned into the memories of the early disciples. When a loved one dies, somehow the memories of their last hours are etched into memory so that years later we can recall them vividly. As the early church grew and the resurrection story circulated, the dramatic rising of Jesus amplified all the other recollections of his life and they became precious to the church.

When the church gathered on Sunday in the homes of the faithful, the act of breaking bread and pouring wine elicited the memory of Jesus' last supper, and Jesus became alive once more in the hearts and lives of his disciples. Today, we still have as part of our communion liturgy the words of the "anamnesis," literally "a not forgetting." It is an act of memory in which the mystical presence of Christ becomes real to us.

During Holy Week and Easter this month, I invite you to make Christ real in your lives by remembering him in worship and making him present in your day to day activities. As Christians, we do not follow a memory, but a Savior who is very much alive in the world today and who continues to act through those in whom he dwells.

Dr. Harry L. Serio