Re-membering to Forgive

 

Re-membering to Forgive

Reflections on remembrance, healing, and forgiveness:

          In We Preach Christ Crucified, Kenneth Leech writes in discussing the character of Christian life, “It is, of course, essential to try to communicate the Christian life as a whole as a putting on of Christ, a sharing in his dying and rising. …like most Christians, I continue to struggle with what this means in our daily lives and in our theological praxis”.

          “'Do this in remembrance of me' stands at the center of Christian worship. Yet it is a strange act and seems to the outsider to be a foolish one. For here Christians not only retell the ancient stories, they claim to re-enact the Last Supper, relive the sacrifice of Calvary and of heaven, and remember their own broken body through solidarity with the broken and glorious body of Jesus Christ”. 

            Remembrance is not memory in the typical usage but a “corporate memory, the memory that recovers lost traditions and suppressed histories, the memory which nourishes and strengthens movements and struggles”. “…and is of the greatest importance in the lives of Christians. Without memory there can be no forgiveness, no healing of the hurts and pain of the past. And forgiveness and healing are central to Christian existence”. MBA

Can there be healing without remembrance?

Soul Friends April 2

We Preach Christ Crucified by Kenneth Leech.

Books have arrived. They are $10 and are in the Parish Office.

Our assignment is to read the first 52 pages.