Immediately after something memorable happens, we are filled with emotion and say that we will never forget it. I think back to 9/11 when the country came together as one and every year since we hear the words “never forget.” However, time can erode our memory, especially if history isn’t passed down to each generation. 9/11 might mean a lot to me, but it currently means nothing to my children.
Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension had to have been the talk of the world at the time. No one like Jesus can step into the world without leaving a mark on it. He cured the sick, raised the dead, and even forgave sins. After Jesus ascended, the Apostle Luke says that they, “…returned to Jerusalem with great joy and they were continually in the temple praising God.”
Fast forward to today and the continually praising God has changed a bit. We are all affected by Jesus’s coming, but we didn’t get to experience it first hand. There are a few people who believe that 9/11 didn’t happen the way the world saw it and there were people at the time of Jesus who didn’t believe that Jesus was who He said He was. If some people at the time of Jesus didn’t believe, imagine how many people don’t believe now over 2,000 years later.
Jesus established His one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and gradually throughout the years, people became divided on the meaning of various different teachings of the Church and groups broke off to form other Christian religions. I didn’t believe this statistic when I saw it, but there are currently over 40,000 different Christian religions out there in the world. While the many religions may agree on some of the same things, we are far from being united as one body of believers.
We should each try to delve into the history of the Church and learn where we came from, so we can better see where we are going. Not only read the Bible, but also contemplate the meaning of the message. Just going to Mass on a regular basis and going through the liturgical calendar, allows us to continually relive the life of the Church and Jesus. We may say, I’ve heard this reading hundreds of times, but hearing the stories in the Bible over and over help us to never forget the lessons that the Bible teaches us.
The tradition of the Church is another thing that complements the written words in the Bible. Just as many families have certain traditions that are passed on to future generations, we should follow the traditions that the Church has passed on to us and pass them down to our children as well. The Bible is great, but there are gaps if we disregard all the tradition. Tradition is also good, but it doesn’t stand on it’s own. The two complement each other and we need both to get the full historical picture of the Church.
We don’t want the message of Jesus to die by being gradually eliminated from our culture, traditions, and lives. We are all tasked with the duty to pass our faith down to future generations. Many people have given their lives to spread the faith and their sacrifice has touched many lives in a positive way. May we all find our own little way to help the memory of Jesus grow and spread throughout the world.
