Even Should You Forget, I will Never Forget You

At the beginning of Lent, marked with the sign of the cross, we joined Jesus on his Spirit-led pilgrimage through the desert for forty days.  The Sundays of Lent marked waystations on our pilgrimage to Jerusalem, our walk with the Lord toward his lifegiving death and resurrection.  We have reached our destination, the place where everything is going to happen.  We shift from going somewhere to being there, remembering what happened in this place, noticing what is happening now, choosing whether to run away or to remain, to live the moment deeply, to let it change us.

Where am I?  My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Words from the Lament Psalms and the Servant Songs of Isaiah carry the emotional content of this place: a clinging to the memory of God in the face of bewildering contradiction.  I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord and my reward with my God.  Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God?  In you our fathers trusted; they trusted and you rescued them.  To you they cried out and they escaped; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.  But I am a worm, not a man, scorned by men, despised by the people.  Has it all come to this?

What am I looking for?  Who is looking for me?  Confused, disoriented, lost, abandoned.  Our map no longer serves.  Having reached the place we set our face towards, the place we were sure God wanted us, now we feel as if we are nowhere, dangling in suspense between rejecting earth and silent heaven.
Fear descends, a cloud
would shroud my living heart
while fog of sadness tries to rise.
The landmark trees are greying out.
Thus, Mother Agnes described her experience of dementia.  If memories constitute our identity, beyond recall of facts or past experiences, a sense of what has shaped us as persons, bringing about the union of past, present and future, they are the basis of faith and spiritual life.  But what if our memory and sense of identity are blotted out?  Whether through cognitive diminishment, physical pain, trauma, loss, or tragedy, our sense of who we are and what life means can be swallowed up as completely as beautiful, fat cows disappear into the mouths of thin and ugly ones.  At such moments we reach out for something familiar to hold onto, grasping at anything to steady us, but it is someone else who must reach out and take hold of us.

Can I keep going?   Can I do this?  Can I stay here?  Peter was sure he could follow his master to the end, to prison and death.  His moment came, and, forgetting, he slept, resisted, and denied.  The Lord turned and looked at Peter – a piercing glance of pure mercy – and he remembered.  His bitter tears washed him clean, taught him that weakness and failure are not the end, that there is life beyond the collapse of all our resources.

Do I entrust myself to him who goes before me?  He who emptied himself.  He who humbled himself.  He who was suspended between heaven and earth, in utter helplessness.  Because he has been longing for this moment, desiring with the greatest desire to give us his Body to eat and his Blood to drink, he offers us an invitation.  Do this in memory of me.  Our way of saying “Yes” is to eat and drink at his table.  And even if we should then forget him, the Lord does not forget us.  He will turn his face to us again.  Through him, with him, and in him, we say: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
Image: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/832058?utm_content=shareClip&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pxhere