EIN HARGLWYDDES SEREN Y MôR –

OUR LADY STAR OF THE SEA – LLANDUDNO

Fr Jones’s Newsletter - Sunday 22 February 2009

Dear Parishioner,

I was struck by the first words of the first reading at today’s Mass:

        No need to recall the past...

        See, I am doing a new deed,

        Even now it comes to light,

        Can you not see it?

Memory is one of the most fascinating facilities of the human brain.  A great deal of research into memory has been going on for years and with increasing intensity. 

Although some scientists say that the primates (mammals with a large brain, like apes) have some very limited power of recall, the difference between them and us is astronomically big.  Memory is a human thing and a fascinating thing.

We rely on our memories for our own identification.  If we couldn't remember who our parents were or where we came from, or what we did yesterday, our self understanding would be so limited that we would not be able to function at all as a human being.

And that is true also of our Faith; remembering is crucial to it and an act of worship.  If “the glory of God is man fully alive”, as St Ireneus says, then the more we make use of the faculties of mind and body which he gave us, the more we worship him.

The Jews in the days before Jesus were repeatedly told by God to keep in mind the wonderful deeds of God.  Many of the great psalms do nothing else than recount the history of the Israelite people, from their deliverance from Egypt to their being fully established in Israel under David and his kingly successors.

Moses established the Paschal Meal, which the Jews keep to this day, as a yearly reminder and celebration of their liberation from Egypt.  He called it a “Memorial”. 

It was while He was celebrating this Paschal Meal, which we now call the Last Supper, that Jesus instituted the Eucharist.  He told the amazed apostles to do this– changing bread and wine into his Body and Blood as he had just done– as a “Memorial” of Him.

What the Jews understood by this word was a rite that would make the past present for them, just as the past becomes present when we remember things.  When they celebrate the Paschal Meal, the whole story of their liberation from Egypt under Moses’ leadership fills their minds.

This is what Jesus meant when he called the Last Supper a Memorial and told the Apostles to do what he had done.  The Holy Spirit who changes the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body and Blood during the Mass makes the whole historical event of Jesus’ death and resurrection become a sacramental presence.  So it is not just Jesus who is hidden behind the appearances of Bread and Wine, but his Crucifixion and his Resurrection too.  Thus the past actually becomes present; and this is what the word Memorial means in Jesus’ vocabulary.

This “remembering” therefore, is not just confined to the mind.  What happens in the mind when we remember the Crucifixion of Jesus happens outside of the mind, in the elements of the Sacrament—the events become present, the past is made present in the here and now.  This means that the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross becomes present every time the Mass is celebrated.  So, the answer to the question, What is the Mass? is “the Mass is the sacrifice of Christ” 

By attending it, we share in its offering.  We join with Christ in offering this sublime sacrifice to his Father, the Sacrifice that gives Almighty God “all honour and glory”.  It is therefore the greatest act any human being can ever perform.

When the Words of Consecration (This is my Body...this is my Blood) are said, the prayer that follows always expresses this Memorial.  It is called the “Memorial Prayer”.  It uses terms like “celebrating the memory” and it spells out what is being remembered, both in our minds and out there on the altar, the death and resurrection of Christ.

This understanding of the Mass is of crucial importance.  For this reason, I remind you of it frequently when I am introducing the Mass and often in my sermons too.  I am now putting this teaching down on paper so that you can reflect on it in your own time. 

“No need to remember the past...See, I am doing a new deed” - the words of our First Reading.  God raises the faculty of Memory to a new and sublime level.  Within the Church it is no longer simply a question of our human minds bringing the past to the present; God himself does the same, but far more wonderfully.

The chasm that divides the memory of the apes from our own memories is as nothing to the abyss that separates our own memory from the Memorial in the Sacraments.  For this Memorial is nothing less that the creative Memory of God.

God bless you,

Fr Antony Jones