From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Do this in remembrance. Perhaps no time of year stirs up feelings of connection to those we love and who have loved us more than the holidays.  It’s more than nostalgia and it’s more than wistfulness. In the liturgy there is a Greek word, anamnesis, that we translate as “remembrance.” It’s one of those places in which English doesn’t have an adequate range of emotive depth.  Anamnesis is better translated as “memory alive.” 

It has a consuming quality that implies that we are standing in the midst of the past alive all around us. We started filming the Christmas Eve pageant this past week and the meaning of anamnesis comes home in moments like that — moments when you realize that kids have been re-enacting, bringing alive the memory, of that Nativity story for nearly 2000 years.

This comes home so powerfully every time the first strains of Once in Royal David’s City start up and it swells toward its triumphant end — as if the whole arc of salvation is sung. One longing voice, on the first note, is joined by countless voices here, past, and yet to come, as the Church’s glad tidings of great joy swell toward the last verse.

We sing, we do this, in remembrance.

So, when we hear, “Do this in remembrance of me,” what we are really hearing Jesus say is, “Do this because of the memory alive all around you right now.” Jesus is calling us to reawaken our awareness of the living and true presence of his love unfolding and enfolding us from our beginning to our end and beyond. 

Reminding and being reminded of that love again and again is so much of the work of the Church. Now, as in our earliest days, that work depends on you who give to make it happen — who help keep the memory alive.

If you have not pledged yet, I ask that you do so at stphilipstucson.org/pledge to help us in these uncertain times to proclaim the sure and certain hope of God’s love.

Let’s continue to support our life together so that we, with those who have come before, and with all those who will come after us, may always do this in remembrance.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert