There is no remembrance

Of former things.

Thus says Ecclesiastes in today’s first reading. How true that observation rings today!

The overwhelming majority of people today have a very, very poor knowledge of history.

This lack of remembrance is crippling for people in a democracy, depriving them of history’s lessons and of the perspective that history gives, leaving them vulnerable to the manipulations of the glib and the ever-changing currents of popular opinion.

Remember the new technology that promised to revolutionize the economy and connect people everywhere? Millions were invested into companies that “built out” or otherwise aimed to capitalize on that technology. In the end, there was a capacity glut: the majority of the companies went bankrupt and thousands of those who had sought to capitalize on this technology were left with nothing.

That is what happened with railroads in the 19th century and there was little or no remembrance of these former things by those who invested in the Tech Boom at the end of the 20th century and subsequently lost millions.

Such a lack of remembrance is even more dangerous for those of us who are Christians. First of all, we believe in Salvation History: that God not only speaks to our hearts through the Spirit, but that God’s most definitive communications with us came at particular places at particular points in our history – most definitively when God walked among us two thousand years ago in a small Middle Eastern country in the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Remembrance of these “former” things is essential.

It is also good for us to have remembrance not only of God’s explicit interventions in human history but also of God’s people before and after the time of Christ. For too many of us, our knowledge is limited to what we read in Scripture and the examples we see in our brothers and sisters here and now: with no remembrance of the believers of old and of the example they give, good and bad alike.

We are thus deprived of the lessons and the perspective that comes with knowledge of the people of old. We are deprived of the edifying examples of those who have imitated Christ most profoundly and most spectacularly since the time of the Apostles: the great saints. We are deprived of the example of saints who may have been less high profile, but whose devout imitation of Christ may resonate in a very special way with our individual personalities. We are also deprived of the lessons of how God’s grace has continued to work in and through His people, even when some of these people and their leaders have behaved in ways that were less than edifying.

Remembrance of former things can give us guidance, perspective, and even hope as we seek to imitate Christ ever more closely in our own day and in the days to come.