Memory is one of the many ambiguous aspects of what it is to be human. It is both a blessing and a curse. Memory can be a source of comfort and good cheer. We remember good times and good friends. We remember those whom we have loved. We remember successes in our lives. We remember moments when we seem miraculously to have been rescued or delivered – from our own stupidity and sinfulness, from an accident or circumstance we could not have foreseen. I often look back on my life with gratitude and also an occasional shudder. Thank God! that He prevented me from doing such and such. Thank God! that He stopped me: another step or two in a certain direction would have meant disaster, ruin, sometimes even death. Memory, as I said, can be a source of comfort and good cheer, also a source of faith, trust and even hope.

But memory can also bring us pain, for if we can remember the good times, we can also remember the bad times. And if we can remember good friends and those we love, we can also remember those who betrayed us, tried to hurt us, even hated us. We can remember failures and these sometimes more vividly than successes. We can remember moments when we have betrayed ourselves and others. We can remember times when we were not rescued or delivered, when it seems God did not prevent us but gave us over to our own devices, to our stupidity and sinfulness, when in fact we took those steps in the wrong direction and there was disaster, ruin, and shame. Memory is ambiguous; it can be both a blessing and a curse, a bane.

But considering things from a different vantage point, there is an aspect of memory which is not ambiguous at all. Memory is always about something which is past, over, absent, and gone. True: the act of memory is a kind of bringing into the present something of the past. And true also: things past, when they are remembered, can be influential, indeed powerful in the present. Be that as it may, memory is about things that are finished, over, absent, and gone. That is why memory can be such a source of heartbreak and pain. A loved one remembered is a loved one not there.

If you will allow me to be somewhat personal, when my wife Polly died, several good and kind people hoping to comfort me said to me, “Think of all the wonderful memories that you have.” That should have worked. It didn’t. I thought to myself, “I don’t want any memories. Keep the memories away. They hurt too much; I can’t bear them.” For memory is about something, someone, over, absent, and gone.

We are here this morning, good people, to remember Jesus. Certainly, that is part of what we do today and every day in this Church. We remember Jesus. We remember his teachings and the events of his life and death. But, if that were all that we were doing, we could do it just as well at home by reading the Gospels or in a comfortable lecture hall with a fancy scholar, rather than in an underheated church with a paltry parish priest. However, the reason we are here this morning is not simply to remember Jesus, but to be with Jesus, for Jesus is more than a memory. A memory is unfinished, over, absent, and gone, but Jesus is risen! He is alive! He is present! He is here! And he summons us to be with him in this Church.

This is why in certain crucial passages the New Testament uses an unusual and, according to the lexicons, a rather rare word for memory. In the Mass, following the Gospels we quote Jesus, “Do this in remembrance of me” or “Do this for the remembrance of me.” “Do this eis ten emen anamnesin.” “Do this for my anamnesis.” Anamnesis. There is no equivalent word in English. The Greek word means “to make present,” to make present, to make active, real, and concrete in the present something of the past, or – to put it another way – to make present in the here and now something/someone who is not, so to speak, of the here and now. Jesus promised that when we gather and remember him in a meal of bread and wine – as he commanded us to do – then, in that meal, anamnesis will transcend memory, and he will be present, he will be made present, as he promised, in the bread and wine to be our fellow and our food.

We are here because Jesus is here. There is little other reason for this Church to be. He is present to us in his Word, and in the Mass we read and we hear the Scriptures which speak of him or point to him. He is present in his Word. He is particularly present among us in the proclamation of the Gospel. You will notice that the Book of the Gospels and its reading are treated as if Christ were present there. The book is acknowledged; it is censed. The reading is acclaimed. They are treated as if Christ were present there, because Christ is present there. By hearing the Good News of Jesus in the past, through the proclamation of the Gospel we encounter the Risen Jesus of the present.

We are here because Jesus is here. Week by week, or day by day He makes himself present in the Mass and He gives Himself to those who worship. He is present to us here at certain crucial moments in our lives through the Sacraments. Present in moments of healing and forgiveness. Present at certain turning points in the lives of his people. There was, for instance, a baptism in this Church this morning. And what is baptism? The beginning of a life or the beginning of a new kind of life. There can be no more crucial moment than that. In the Sacrament, in baptism Jesus makes himself present to incorporate that new life into His own.

We are here today because Jesus is here. There is little other reason; indeed, there is no other reason for this Church to be.