Pope Francis made an interesting comment in his Pentecost homily:
Go here to read the rest. Since Vatican II, too many Catholics have become bone ignorant as to the history of the Faith, making themselves, and too often the Church, a prisoner of the moment.
The Third Glorious Mystery: The Descent of the Holy Spirit. Desire zeal for the the glory of God. Think of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Mary and the Apostles, in the form of tongues of fire, in fulfilment of Christ’s promise.
Repent, confess, do penance, amend your life, and by good woks glorify Almighty God.
Pray for the living and the dead.
The Holy Father’s words on memory recall what Bl John Henry Newman said of Tradition, “It is latent, but it lives. It is silent, like the rapids of a river, before the rocks intercept it. It is the Church’s unconscious habit of opinion and sentiment; which she reflects upon, masters, and expresses, according to the emergency. We see then the mistake of asking for a complete collection of the Roman Traditions; as well might we ask for a full catalogue of a man’s tastes and thoughts on a given subject. Tradition in its fullness is necessarily unwritten; it is the mode in which a society has felt or acted during a certain period, and it cannot be circumscribed any more than a man’s countenance and manner can be conveyed to strangers in any set of propositions.”
The Church, by the Holy Spirit, protects the memory of God’s actions in the world in preserving and teaching the Good News of Jesus the Christ. The Church/Holy Spirit continues to ” do this in remembrance of Me”. The Mass is the actualization of memory. Jesus instituted this gift while honoring the memory of Passover
From G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
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“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit
to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be
walking about.”
A good place to start remembering would be with the liturgy, wouldn’t it?
Since PF has given us these profound words on “the memory of a Christian”, I would hope he would recall the Catholic Church that existed for him up until 1965, and not erase it with his studied amnesia on the fact of its existence.