By remembering, we pay a debt of honor to those who have been wronged and have suffered, especially those who have paid the supreme sacrifice. By remembering, we ensure that the "dead shall not have died in vain." By remembering, we dedicate ourselves to the "unfinished work which they who fought.. have thus far so nobly advanced." (Lincoln, ibid.) By remembering, we "strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." (Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865)

By remembering rightly we seek to heal the wounds, redeem the past, and foster peace and harmony between us. By remembering rightly we do not want to perpetuate hostility but to pursue reconciliation. It is all too easy to carry our resentments against wrongs suffered, and loved ones lost, by seeking to harm others and to want revenge. Memory of the evils of the past can embitter us and fuel antagonism and prejudice. Descendants of victims carry in their memories the injustice done to their relatives which feeds the desire for vengeance.

Miroslav Volf in The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, writes that we are much of what we remember about ourselves. We are who we are because of what we remember about our origins, our career, our family, our successes, our failures, and our suffering. Memory is central to identity. How we deal with our memories, what we do with our memories, determines how we see ourselves in the present, and how we project ourselves into the future. If there are painful memories we must seek healing for them, by interpreting them in the light of our experience and faith. If we don't, then there is the temptation to act out our pain by becoming a perpetrator in our turn. The victim of abuse becomes an abuser unless his memories are healed. Memory may wound another, and reinforce cycles of violence. If a person is imprisoned in his past, he may be condemned to repeat it.

Elie Wiesel, sees clearly that memory itself can be made into an abomination. In Bosnia, "that tormented land," he writes, "it is memory that is a problem. It's because they remember what happened to their parents or their sister or their grandparents that they hate each other." The same can be said for all places where there is ethnic or religious conflict.

How do we look at our painful memories and find peace about the matter, and reconciliation with the perpetrators? How can we remember charitably rather than with resentment? How can the past be redeemed? How can my wounds be healed - the wounds of a mother and father who have lost a son or daughter - or the soldier who has lost a limb? How will the wrong be somehow righted. Do we have to take the righting of the wrong into our own hands so that the evildoers do not triumph, or is their hope for the righting of wrongs by an impartial judge in the here and now, or at the end of history?

Revelation 20 reminds us that at the end of time all the dead will stand before the throne of God. The books were opened in which were recorded all their deeds. The book of life was also opened in which were inscribed the names of those who have eternal life. "The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books....If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." That is why we are not to take revenge on our enemies, but leave it to God. "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

Studdert-Kennedy envisaged God using memory as his means of Judgment:

I saw no thronged angelic court, I saw no great white throne,

I saw no open Judgment books, I seemed to stand alone.

I seemed to stand alone beside a solemn sounding sea,

While, at my feet upon the shore, broke waves of memory.

Their murmuring music sobbed and sought a way into my soul,

The perfect past was present there, and I could see it whole,

Its beauty and its ugliness, its sorrow and its sin,

Its splendour and its sordidness, as wave on wave rolled in.

And ever deeper pierced the pain of all that I had lost,

My dear dead dreams of perfect things, I saw them tempest-tossed.

They fell like wreckage at my feet, and, as I turned them o'er,

The solemn waves, in Memory's caves, kept booming 'Nevermore!'

That is why Christ, in his new creation, enables us to forget what can give us pain. We are to look forward to the new heavens and the new earth in which all memories will be healed. "there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order has passed away." (Revelation 21:4)

In The Divine Comedy, Dante the writer is also a pilgrim on a voyage through the regions of the afterlife. The ancient poet Virgil is his guide through hell and purgatory until they come to the garden of earthly pleasures, the site of original innocence, from which Adam and Eve would have been transposed into the heavenly paradise had they not sinned. At the threshold of that place of never-ending spring and perfect beauty with purgatory behind him, Dante was left for a moment without a guide, only to follow his will. As he entered the garden, he came upon two streams. A lady from the other side - most likely Lady Wisdom - explained their significance to a perplexed Dante:

On this side it [the stream] descends with power to end

one's memory of sin; on the other,

it can restore recall of each good deed.

To the one side, it is Lethe; on the other,

Eunoe; neither stream is efficacious

unless the other's waters have been tasted:

their savor is above all other sweetness.

Earthly paradise, a place in which sins are forgotten and good deeds remembered, is the fulfillment of Christian promises. Dante describes how he saw himself reflected in the water before drinking of it and was unable to bear the sight of his shameful image - so much that he cried to God for help. His guilt can only be removed by the blood of Christ on the Cross. The river of forgetting does its work in two steps: it exposes sin and then makes it disappear from memory. For Dante, there can be no forgetting of sin without its clear acknowledgement (the books were opened and the dead were judged by what was written in them), followed by genuine repentance and profound transformation. The loss of memory follows the final judgment. The river of forgetfulness is the water of divine purification.. "Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." (Isaiah 65:17) As a world of love, the heavenly paradise can begin only after sins have disappeared from memory, and in their place, all memory of goodness has been restored to it.

Forgetting and remembering are stages on the journey of the soul toward the God of love. When we drink of the streams of living water, which Christ gives us, we can enter the world of love. We forget evil in order remember only the good.

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." (Revelation 22:17)

END