Remembering the Future

I have long been a fan of the Clerically Speaking podcast and, over the years, I have been blessed by the friendship of Fr Harrison Ayre. That friendship (together with Tom Gourlay) has made possible my being on an episode of the show on Catholics and the Net.

In listening to Episode 198 of the show, and in particular a segment concerning the remembrance of God, I was struck by a line by the show’s co-host, Fr Anthony Sciarappa. The specific theme touched on the link between our memory and hope, to which Fr Anthony said that the substance of despair is a forgetting about our future, that is a lack of remembering that which is in store for us.

At first instance, the notion of remembering and future might sound like a contradiction in terms. This is highly understandable because, as I indicated in an article in the Journal of Moral Theology, we have become conditioned into thinking about time as a string of isolated moments, and we have become conditioned into linking the act of remembering with only the remembering of a past event. By contrast, Fr Harrison reminded listeners in that episode that the substance of the act of remembering is that of a reality that we have encountered, the heart of which is the reality of Jesus Christ.

This point is significant for two reasons.

In the first instance, it shows the link between faith and memory. In the emphasis on the link between faith and belief, what is often forgotten is that it is a memory - a memory of an encounter with the person of God - that forms the basis of this belief. We believe because we have encountered with the divine, and we continue to believe because we remember that encounter. Thus at one level, the faith involves a looking back into the past. However, our remembering encompasses more than mere recall of a past event. As Lumen Fidei reminds us, faith is also a remembrance of a promise made by God, a promise that is to be fulfilled in the future. In light of this promise by God, faith

becomes capable of opening up the future, shedding light on the path to be taken. We see how faith, as remembrance of the future, memoria futuri, is thus closely bound up with hope (9).

In the second instance, Fr Harrison’s point shows the crucial link between faith and hope. If memory is the foundation of faith, hope gives faith a structure by giving that memory a future orientation. This orientation of hope is not a pollyannish optimism of a future outcome - like wishing for a million bucks - for such a wish is by definition, completely devoid of real content. By contrast, the future orientation of Christian hope rests on a reality already experienced. In the words of Spe Salvi

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a "proof" of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a "not yet" (7)

To bring this back to Fr Anthony’s line about despair, the reason for despair among many (including many Christians), is based on a disconnect between our faith and memory. In addition, it is a disconnect of our memory from the future that is promised to us by God.

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