Please Remember Me
Loreena McKennitt sings a powerful song called “Please Remember Me”. Based on Dante’s Prayer this meditative and deeply spiritual song with its thought-provoking lyrics and beautiful music moves my heart whenever I listen to it. “Please remember me”! It is a plea!
Remembrance! It is important to remember, to celebrate, and to keep the memory of people and events alive in our hearts and minds. Lest we forget, is the warning we hear at Remembrance Day services. We remember so we do not forget — the courage, service, sacrifice of those who have gone before us, often in a fight for freedom, for a better way of life or for our faith!
November is a month we set aside to remember, both in society at large and in our Catholic faith. There are many ways to remember, many rituals and ceremonies that take place to help us. On November 1 we celebrated All Saints Day remembering all those who have gone before us, men and women, named and unnamed whose lives have been an inspiration, a witness and an example to follow. And then on November 2 we celebrated “All Souls Day”. We often write the names of deceased family and friends in Books of Remembrance and we pray for them throughout this month.
All Saints Day also brings to mind St. Eugene deMazenod, who was canonized in 1995, and the six Oblates he sent to Canada from France who sailed away with the song Salve Regina on their lips. It brings to mind the 200-year history of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Canada and the amazing OMI Lacombe Canada convocation I attended recently. With the theme 200 years of grace we were invited to remember and celebrate, contemplate and consider a future we shape with hope as we move forward together.
Spending time on Mission Hill during the convocation, I read a sign “Star Garden – Together we Grow”. It felt like a slogan appropriate for what we were living at the convocation. Vowed Oblates, lay associates, men and women, Canadians, Kenyans, and those from other countries all sat together around tables sharing the same faith, the same charism, praying together, eating meals together, sharing life! At the entrance to the meeting room was a poster board with photos of Oblates, still living, but unable to be present. We remember them as well. We are all ‘saints in the making’.
The banquet, which culminated our time together was very special. As I walked around the banquet room on the last evening of the convocation, I was touched by the history with the struggles and challenges, joys and new beginnings that were depicted on the murals that we were invited to read. There was a small photo of a group of associates, all of us much younger. It reminded me of our shared journey over the last few decades and all we have lived and learned, struggled through and committed to. Gratitude welled up in my heart. I have been shaped and formed as I have journeyed in this community.
Walking through the cemetery on Mission Hill earlier in the week was a reminder of this long history and of those who have gone before us. Standing before the graves of Oblates I knew well, worked side-by-side with, prayed with and shared meals and mission with, also filled me with memories and gratitude. We are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us!
These words form the basis of a song, ironically written in 1995 by Joyce Johnson Rouse of Earth Mama. They sum up the importance of remembering, ‘lest we forget’.
“We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us.
They are saints and they are humans, they are angels, they are friends.
We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge,
when we know that by our efforts things will be better in the end.”
(May it be so!)
By Debbie Doornbos