Dear Friends,
As I get older my memory seems to be more necessary, so I thought it interesting recently when I was reading Gerhard Lohfink’s book on Jesus that the people of Israel had a very different view of memory than we have. He says that ancient Israel always regarded the future as behind it. It had the future at its back. The Hebrew word for future means “what is behind.” The past in Hebrew means “what is ahead.” The Israelites would not have said, “Auschwitz is behind us,” but, “It lies before us; it lies before our eyes.” When Israel was moving toward the future it looked not to what has not happened, but to what has already happened, thus turned backward, it could step into an unknown future.
Israel’s forward progress, Fr. Lohfink says, was not steered by assumptions about what is future but by memory of what has already happened. Insofar as the past appeared like a connected series of traces that showed the right and wrong steps, the detours and false directions, the next step was made possible. Every liturgical feast was a remembrance of the past, a sacred memory. The liturgical events for Israel demanded that they place themselves, their whole person, back into what happened and in this very way permit God’s ancient deeds to be renewed in them. Fr. Lohfink says that Israel looked back with a relentless soberness. As the book of Deuteronomy says “A wandering Aramaean was my ancestor.” Israel examined its historical failures with a lack of illusion. They were not afraid to name their failures, their rebellion against God, their sinful ways and their lack of fidelity to the covenant.
That look backward did not make Israel incapable of action, instead that sense of history set the people free to act with an incomprehensible dynamism. Critiqued by the prophets the people move forward in the most radical fashion. He quotes the American author, Walker Percy, “Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but not one single Hittite, even though the Hittites had a great flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people? When one meets a Jew in New York or New Orleans or Paris or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. What are they doing here? But it is even more remarkable to wonder, if there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites here? Where are the Hittites? Show me one Hittite in New York City.” This tiny nation and tiny people has had a tremendous impact upon our world – and they are still here!
Israel’s memory is also our own. Jesus lived with that same view – his future is created out of Israel’s past. He lived from the Old Testament and focused on its essential points. The church follows in Jesus’ footsteps. For this reason the church is in a position to be always new, always young, always more modern than the society in which she lives, because radical memory gives a future and causes the church, insofar as she takes her own experiences seriously, to be ahead of its time. The Jewish saying, says Lohfink, is also true of the church: “The secret of redemption is remembering.”
So how do we face tomorrow? By remembering our past, by remembering where we have come, by remembering what God has done for us. That gives us the freedom to walk boldly into the future – not placing our hopes on people, on political leaders, on systems – but on God and God’s faithfulness. Faith means trusting one’s self, one’s whole existence to the history that began with Abraham. That history lies before us. If we are looking at that history, letting it be what shapes us, then the future is always behind us.
Peace,
Fr. Damian