A Memory That Saves

"You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation."

+ Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov

Hope of the Resurrection

"...the very accomplishment of a liturgical celebration of the mystery of the resurrection floods the light of hope into our hearts, which produces generosity. It is the person who does not hope, and is tethered to temporality, who concludes he might as well eat, drink, and be merry if this really is all there is. If we are really only flickering bits of consciousness that will be snuffed out tomorrow, we might as well focus on the little pleasure we can squeeze out of today. (How simple life must be for a hedonist!) 

But hope in the resurrection allows us to take the proper measure of our brief time in this world, and this does not make us neglect our neighbor, it stirs up greater generosity. We have seen this in the lives of many mystics. The saint with a soul soaring upward into heaven does not forget the world; to the contrary, he or she is in the most radically free position to transform it. 

Chesterton said his first attractions to Christianity came when he realized that Christians were the only ones to preach the paradox that one must be “enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it.” 

Hope allows us to love the world radically, without practical calculation or cost analysis. Hope gives courage. Hope gives fortitude. Hope lets us love recklessly."

+ Dr David Fagerberg, "Liturgical Mysticism", Steubenville : Emmaus Academic, 2019. 122.