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FORGETFULNESS
At a recent discussion in an aged care complex, one resident’s request hung hauntingly in the air . . . "I want my memory back – I want to remember people, things, events that have shaped me – the songs of hope, the hymns of faith, the God stories that give meaning to my existing – forgetting makes my heart empty . . . please give me back my memory."
One does not need to be elderly to have the memory of faith erased. How often one comes across people who say, "I have lost my faith, I cannot believe".
This nation was held together in times of war and peace, prosperity and depression, natural disaster and global calamity by a trinity of faith, hope and love. Underneath the larrikin humour, the healthy cynicism and open criticism of religious institutions there was a ready acceptance that the story of God, leading a captive people from slavery to freedom, was symbolic of all human journeys. Exodus was seen as a migration odyssey. We resonate with this movement from wastelands and wildernesses, mountains and valleys, into a "better" place that give a wider perspective on life. We settle down only to be called to move again.
This same Exodus God is revealed in Bethlehem. He shared human suffering, gifted dignity to every person, died in love on a cross and offers release from our imprisonments to sin, death and fear. God in Jesus Christ gifts eternal hope to the whole of creation. This hope of the resurrection, was embedded in the psyche of most Australians. It gave us a bigger canvas to place our losses and gains – our living and dying.
Sadly, the memory of God’s saving love is submerged in the rising dough of hot cross buns, chocolate eggs and fluffy bunnies, and we lose the broad canvas of meaning. We settle for less and less.
Faced, as we all are at a global, national and local level with a financial crisis that has shaken our lives, we need to get our faith, hope and love memory back. We need to understand the current events as a healthy movement from captivity to the material and to the addictions that money and consumerism have placed upon us, into a new place of freedom. We need to discover the simple things that really matter in life.
The Christian faith is not about us striving or searching, but the truth that God searches, finds and loves with a heart that bears the scars of our rejection and forgetfulness.
The cross and empty tomb display the power of love over everything – no financial downturn can make us of lesser worth.
Please God, may we have our memory back.
The Most Reverend Roger Herft
Archbishop of Perth