It is a simple word: “remember.” Yet, its meaning is more spiritual and mystical than many of us think. For, at its heart, memory, and remembering are deeply mysterious, and, as we shall see, the deepest remembering is done by God.
Materialists and others who like to reduce everything to matter and to the physical, will tend to see memory merely in terms of brain cells storing information. And yet, this explanation answers very little really. How, for example is “information” reduced to cellular tissue? And how is that information broken down and later retrieved in an orderly, meaningful way? Is there one cell for every letter of a word? Is the vast and subtle information of facial recognition stored in 1000 cells, 10,000, or 10 million…? And how do the many different cells interact and take their data bits stored in their tissue and create a package we call knowledge, or memory in such a way that the knowing subject (us) is able to be present to it? And how can we explain consciousness, self consciousness and the reflexive experience that we “know that we know,” that we are “aware that we are aware” and know that we are remembering? How we can explain higher phenomena such as awareness, consciousness, personality, and memory?
I pray, dear reader, I am not being too overwhelming in raising all these questions. My point is only to illustrate that there is a great deal of mystery when it comes to the human mind. And when we ask “what does it really mean to remember” we ought to accept that our meager words cannot really plumb the full depths of all this.
Indeed, Scripture teaches that only God really knows our inner depths:
—O Lord, you search me and you know me…too wonderful for me this knowledge (Ps 139:1),
—More tortuous than anything is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the LORD, explore the mind and test the heart (Jer 17:9-10).
—Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Cor 13:12).
With this humbling background in mind, still the question occurs, “What does it mean to remember.” Just a few and very partial thoughts:
In English, the word remember seems to suggest a putting together of pieces to create a whole. Re + member. Thus, we collect the fragments of our past, mysteriously stored in our mind, and we make sense of them, we connect the dots, we stitch a narrative together that decodes some of their meaning. We take these bit and pieces of stored memory and “re” “member” them. Thus remembering is more than random memories bubbling up (as some suggest dreams are), rather, remembering is to collect, synthesize and make sense of the fragments and “stored data” of memory.
In Latin, the root is memorari – meaning “to be mindful of.” Thus rememorai means to be mindful of something once again. And here we take a step a little deeper into the mystery of the mind. For what it means to “be mindful” is, in fact mysterious, caught up in the mystery of awareness, and consciousness, the mystery of what it means to be a knowing subject. Still, to be mindful of something means to have it present to and interacting with our inner self, with that part of us that is aware, thinking, and pondering.
Theologically remembering is rooted in the Greek word anamnesis, which, while it means “remembering,” or “to bring to mind” in simple Greek etymology, theologically, it means a deeper kind of remembering that makes present what is remembered. Thus, in the theological sense, “remembering” is not simply a passive process, but one by which we actually enter into the Paschal Mystery and those events become present to us in their power. We are not simply recalling distant events, we are experiencing them as present and active.
Thus, to “remember” in the theological sense is to have what God has done for you so present to your heart and mind, that you’re grateful, that you’re different, that you are changed by its power at work in you. When Jesus says τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν “Do this in remembrance of me” he is doing more than asking us to have a fond memory of him from time to time. What he is saying is, “Gather with me, and experience as present what I have done for you. Don’t just go on standing there, let what I have done be present to you, in your heart and mind, present in such a way that you are grateful, present to you in such a way that you are different, that you are changed by it.”
And thus the great mystery of “remembering” reaches its highest peak as a work of God. For if, as English suggests, “re-membering” involves a kind of drawing together and making one, what was bits and pieces, what was somehow dismembered or random and unintelligible, then anamnesis (unerstood here as theological remembering) involves the work of God in bringing all the members of Christ’s body together. This “re-membering” it heals us individually by uniting our divided soul. It also “re-members” us collectively by making us one, it involves knitting us together into one body, the Body of Christ.
And when Christ’s own work of “re-membering” is complete there will be as St. Augustine says, Unus Christus, amans seipsum (one Christ, loving himself). Then will be fulfilled the words of the ancient hymn Ubi Caritas which says, congregavit nos in unum Christi amor (the love of Christ has gathered us in one).
Yes, when all has been “re-membered” then will be fulfilled what Scripture says, So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Rom 12:5).
What does it mean to “remember?” A lot! And much of it is mysterious and marvelous.
Here Fr. Francis Martin speaks on the theological sense of remembering.
Remembering is the Holy Spirit’s enlightening discourse that demystifies the wisdom of our life.
The Holy Spirit brings to mind our sins so we can pray for Divine Mercy.
To me, remembering is about re-presenting the past, especially if it concerns a relic or some kind of reminder.
Although I don’t disagree with any of your thought-provoking (or should that be memory-provoking?) meditations on the mystery of divine remembrance, I should point out that many of the questions you list in your second paragraph about the mechanics and bio-chemistry of the brain are, in fact, questions that scientists can experiment and test for to gain better understanding about.
Just because we don’t have answers for them yet doesn’t mean we won’t gain more insight into those questions in the future — after all, neuroscience is still in its infancy. You draw a false dichotomy when you declare that because we don’t know something now, it cannot be known.
Fair enough, but your own reply says many can or will someday in an undertermined future be answered. I wonder which ones you think will not be answered. In the end, I think it remains a reductionist notion to say that science alone can fully explain things. This would be the error of scientism which is not science, or scientific, Science is able is to learn about a lot mechanisms, but it is ultimately a poor vehicle answer the question of why and metaphysical realities are beyond its realm. Further when it comes to things like consciousness, awareness and reflexivity (that i am aware that i am aware, that i can think about thinking and so forth) are difficult the define in purely scientific terms. What does it actually mean to be conscious, and how is it different than simply being aware, etc.
I think all but your last two questions in the second paragraph (which rise to the level of universally explaining, as it were, consciousness, memory, etc.) are easily within the grasp of science to examine and illuminate; and that science can give us a lot of useful information even about consciousness and memory, even if science can’t entirely explain them. I worry that the first part of your argument above is essentially a “God of the gaps” theory–those things that we cannot currently understand through scientific observation must not be understandable by science and must belong exclusively to the realms of philosophy and theology. That’s a dangerous way of approaching both science and philosophy/theology. But I also don’t want you to think for even a moment that I am advocating scientism or reductionism! There’s a very good reason that I am a theologian (my wife’s the evolutionary biologist).
I agree that metaphysical questions that address the “why” of meaning (as opposed to the “why” of causation, i.e. “why did x happen after y?”) do not fall within the realm of the natural sciences. On the other hand, I am always wary of any epistemology that drives a wedge between the physical and the metaphysical; the mystery of the Incarnation and of God the Creator is that the physical and the metaphysical are linked, both ontologically and epistemologically. We do ourselves an extraordinary disservice if, as philosophers and theologians, we decide that we can ignore the findings of the natural sciences because “they don’t study our stuff”. As St. Ignatius was fond of reminding us, God is found in all things.
Bottom line, I don’t think consciousness, awareness etc. can be reduced to physical definitions or explanations. I would challenge leaving to define what awareness is to the purely scientific level. Indeed, words themselves fall short. These are and remain very deep mysteries which go beyond mere words You demonstrate that reductionism is not just a problem among scientists. A good healthy dose of mysticism may be helpful for us all in these matters theologians philosophers and scientists alike
I think Mgsr. was talking about the soul in those questions, not the Gnostic notion that whatever science cannot know can be attributed to God.
P.S. Denys Turner’s recent book on *Julian of Norwich, Theologian* (Yale UP, 2011) has a fascinating chapter laying out the deep resonances between memory and prayer in Julian’s theology (Part 2, Ch. 5, pp. 135ff.), drawing on the Augustinian roots of the restoration and healing of memory as a vehicle of grace: memory is a nostalgia, as it were, for “the unremembered past” of our origins and the “unrealized future” of our eschatological eternities. For Julian, then, it is in the process of petitionary prayer that we place ourselves at that nexus: “for Julian, petitionary prayer is a principal means by which the divine love achieves its providential purposes.” In prayer we situate ourselves within the graces of the theological virtues, so that we participate in that divine purpose of love, we participate in the faith of divine self-knowledge, and in hope “we humans are given the gift of participation in the divine relation to time, [so that] from the point of view of the human power in which that grace does its work, it is memory that is given that capacity.” (pp. 151-152)
just a note to respond to Nathaniel.
It is true that we need our brain to think. ( and of course to remember) and it is very well known that there are important neurologic structures that when damaged impair or even erase the ability to store memories ( for example dammage to an area in the temporal lobes called the hippocampus does this, basically we are talking about an area underneath your temple.) Scientists can and will dissect some of the details but to some degree they study things physical things that are associated with consciousness but not the thing itself. I think what Msgr Pope was getting at is the idea. Consider the following: I can in theory someday probe your brain any way I like ( I can image it with CT scans, and MRIs and some yet to be invented brain scanner, perhaps even measure all the electric impulses each individual nerve cell generates, and measure each individual chemical reaction and neurotransmitter realeased, Maybe someday we can even understand learn to correlate some incredibly complex set of chemical reaction/ electric impulses with a given subjective thought. But at the end of the day I measure impulses and cells, and chemistry not the thoughts per se. So for example if you think of say “pink elephant” I can take a scientific snapshot of your brain and say yes here is the 100 million chemical reactions or 5o million electric impusles generated in this or that brain region that occur when you think of pink elephants.. but…. what I see and measure ultimately is not the image of a pink elephant . What is such a thought “made of” ? How would one measure it? I can only measure the associated neurochemistry and what not..) The image of pink elephant remains completely and intrinsically non physical, non measureable, it weighs nothing, can not be seen or touched or measured in any way. It can only be subjectively experienced and reported on by… you the subject. That therefore proves there is something about us that is part of us, but can not be measured, not weighed, not seen, that takes up no material space and yet indispuably exists, one might even call it our “soul”. The pure scholastic theologians out there may not like this arguement because it makes our soul sound a little like something that “inhabits” our body. My apologies, I do not mean precisely this, but I think this line of reasoning pretty clearly means materialism is not possible. I think it is the basic idea Msgr Pope is hinting at in the beginning of his piece.
I’m not sure what the thoughts are that this comment provoked, but this I found this to be a though provoking comment.
I think this is well said
Neat picture. The pictures reminds me of this passage from the Summa Theogica: “Hence Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i) that, “HE WHO IS, is the principal of all names applied to God; for comprehending all in itself, it contains existence itself as an infinite and indeterminate sea of substance.”" (1, 13, 11) Also, of this St. Augustine (De Trin. xv) quote that I found in the Summa: “Not because they are, does God know all creatures spiritual and temporal, but because He knows them, therefore they are.”
Neat video: looking back in a way that ends with thanksgiving to God isn’t also so easy for me.
Concerning the metaphysical discussion: I would define metaphysics as the reconciliation of the evidence of the senses with the testimony of the intellect.
thanks, though I have to say I am not sure I would want to define metaphysics in quite this way. Is there a source for your definition?
When I was a kid, I was taught to put things in my own words. The definition–description may be a more appropriate word–finds its source in my own head. To me, another way of saying the same thing would be: The answer to the problem of the one and the many is called metaphysics.
Father Henri Renard S. J., in his book The Philosophy of Being (IMPRIMI POTEST: P. A. Brooks, S. J., NIHIL OBSTAT, H. B. Ries, Censor liborum, IMPRIMATUR: Moses E. Kiley, Archbishop of Milwaukee, September 8, 1943), writes:
“There can be, he (Parmenides) asserted, no such thing as change; there can be no becoming, no motion. Our senses would lead us into error, but our intellects clearly reveal the fallacy, the absurdity, the impossibility of any motion.” (p. 19)
I call that the testimony of the intellect.
He further writes, “According to him (Heraclitus) the only reality is not “being” but becoming (gives Greek term for becoming). All things are in constant flow or flux.” (p.20)
I call that the evidence of the senses.
Aristotle reconciled the the testimony of the intellect with the evidence of the senses with his doctrine of act and potency. St. Thomas Aquinas enlarged on Aristotle’s teaching.
I think all meaningful metaphysical discourse is either reducible to the Aritotle’s/Thomas’ solution to the problem of the one and the many or else is derived from it.
How do you define metaphysics?
Monseignor, I tend to agree with you, as the whole subject of the human mind iw to melike the human soul, unfathomnable. Science can only explore just so far ( not that presently it has reached its limits on this subject)but it’s scope is finite and point will not be able theoretically to explore beyond its own self-limiting perameters.
Most of the universe or of reality is outside its scope. For example, how much of the universe is an ant aware of and how little of it is the ant capable of grasping? To me the vastness of the universe is mostly unintelligible for human conception …and yet we act is if what we know is IT! Har!
Monsignor Pope’s words should be remembered… The Spanish verb “recordar” (re-heart) is also a beautiful concept: to re-read what is in one’s heart.
Ah, a beautiful word! I also love the Spanish expression “dar a luz” frequently used for giving birth.
It seems to me that forgetfulness is a residue of original sin. To be absent minded is to suffer a division within the self. Luke twice reminds us that the Blessed Virgin had an excellent memory, a quality of being fully present to herself that the rest of us lack in our sundered selves (as Walker Percy would have said). Perfection of memory is one reason I’ve claimed Our Lady as patroness of our parish’s guild of altar servers.