Reading in Exile

Today the Roman Church celebrates the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ (as well as the Octave Day of St. John the Baptist). In praying Matins this morning, I was struck by two lines in the hymn ( Salvete Christi vulnera ): Suique Jesus immemor, Sibi nil reservat sanguinis. And Jesus, not remembering Himself , holds back none of His blood. What a mysterious power is the human memory! To remember is to intend, to re-live something that now no longer exists, to make it intentionally present once again--yet not as it originally was, but strained through the (often distorting) filter of one's life, one's prejudices good and bad, one's temperament, one's fullness or lack of attention, one's imagination But also to remember is to unify one's life, the many disparate strands of one's consciousness, in a single recollected life, centered around some good. But again to remember is to attend to something--perhaps wrongly, to hold back what...