2003-05-25 The Memorial Day weekend in the city generally is marked by an absence...

From the Pastor


May 25, 2003

The Memorial Day weekend in the city generally is marked by an absence: Many people go away for the long weekend. Some will remember this as “Decoration Day,” so called because it is a time for placing flags and flowers on the graves of veterans. The world wars were more vivid in memory then. This year we have the immediate experience of the war in Iraq and the nation honors the memory of those who laid down their lives in the cause of freedom. Memorial Day may be marked by an absence of some of the population gone on holiday, but it exists to mark an absence from the civil order of life which has been sacrificed. Civil memorials are precisely matters of memory: “Remember,” “Never forget,” “We will remember them” – all strains of a theme common to all civilizations burdened by the grief of death, especially the death of the young and those who “died in action,” which phrase seems almost a contradiction. The noble Roman pagans carved on their tombs IN AETERNUM VALE — forever farewell.

The poignancy of civil memorials is very different from the Christian epitaph. This we should remember when Memorial Day this year comes so close to Ascension Day. In the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, Jesus appeared several times to prepare his followers for a new life not radically separated between worlds seen and unseen. The disciples were tempted to the old kind of nostalgic memory when Jesus disappeared before their eyes and they were left looking up to the sky, trying to see where He had gone. A mysterious figure asked them why they were gazing up. They were ordered to go back to work and wait for the power of the Holy Spirit. That would be given ten days later on Pentecost. We are a parish in Manhattan because of that, and we are part of the Universal Church because of that. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, his “Do this in memory of me” was not a “Never forget” kind of remembering. He was giving a continuing presence and not a nostalgic afterglow. His parting words as He ascended were not a “Forever farewell.” They were a commission to begin the work for which his life and death were a preparation: “You are witnesses of those things and, see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised.”

The world’s old poignancy at parting was turned to rejoicing, for the Ascension of Christ was not a melancholic parting. Christ’s last earthly words turned a farewell into a greeting: “I shall be with you always, even to the end of the world.”

Fr. George W. Rutler