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A Thought on Remembrance


Often throughout my lifetime the whole question of Remembrance Sunday has been brought up, why commemorate events that are outside the experience of many. *Jeremy Corbyn is on record as saying that he sees no point in commemorating the First World War and there are others who feel the same, and yet something deep happens on Remembrance Sunday. Something that goes beyond words, something that those of us brought up in a faith where the Eucharist is central to our Liturgical life know instinctively that remembrance of things past is not an idle exercise of nostalgia but an active bringing into our now all those who have loved and died and who are with us in that great cloud of witnesses.

Writing very personally, the First World War is not an abstract historical moment, my maternal grandfather who I knew as a boy, was a young man of 18 was wounded in the Somme, invalided out then sent back to serve in the Royal Flying Corps, he was just too young to miss call up in World War Two and spent his service as a Doctor on the field hospitals and trains in North Africa. My Father and Uncles and Aunts talked about my other Grandfather gassed in the fighting in Bourlon Wood in 1917, something that he lived with all his life. It is all very real to me!

I know of many young people for whom the cemeteries and battlefields of both wars are not signs of victory but signs of loss and hurt and sacrifice even if unintentionally given. We live as we are because of what those women and men, civilians and armed forces, did then.

For us the word remembrance is not simply a look at a photograph or history books, it isn't simply an archeological exercise in imagination. The NT and Early Christian Liturgy used that Greek word 'anamnesis', to point to a deeper and more transfiguring process.

The English translation of it as memorial or remembrance does not do it justice because it means so much more. For in remembering somebody, some event, we make present in our now the past. It is there with us. That is why we can talk of Christ's sacrifice as once and for all but present to us now. That is why we celebrate the Eucharist in memory (anamnesis) of him. If Christ is present then so are we.

This Sunday I and my siblings remember family and friends across the ages as you do, who become present for us all, It is much more poignant because we have just lost our Mother whose birthday and wedding anniversary is this weekend. But with you all I am consoled in faith, that by remembering we never forget and in that 'anamnesis' all in Christ are truly present to us and will always be. Amen.

* Editor's comment. This quote has been picked up by a few papers, but to be fair, Corbyn was commenting on the cost of the memorial events - when veterans are suffering from poverty and relying of charitable handouts to survive. He did attend the Memorial Service at the Cenotaph today - and - unlike other politicians, stayed behind to talk to the veterans after the TV cameras had gone.

(image: Bromley Cross War Memorial)

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