There is something interesting about how we remember things. When I was a child, we had a steel trunk under the bed, packed with old clothes, letters, books, old silverware, and photographs. On some days, my mother would open it, sit on the floor, and start pulling things out: a yellowed shirt, a broken pair of spectacles, a letter written in ink so faded it looked like fog.
Every time she opened it, we kids would groan, “Not again!” because we knew we were about to sit through another episode of The Dusty Chronicles, staring at silverware from 1972. But she’d sit on the floor like a museum curator, holding up the silverware, “Shhh… This is who we are.” She wasn’t preserving junk. She was preserving meaning.
Memories that Bring Clarity
The first reading we heard today does the same. It’s not a list of rules, it’s a call to remember. But not just facts, to remember your identity. “Remember that you were once slaves," Moses says to the Israelites, not to make them feel guilty. But to guide them. You see, memory in Scripture isn’t about looking back with sentiment, it's not about nostalgia, it’s about walking forward with clarity. Knowing who you were so you don’t forget who you are now.
Today, we live in a world that forgets very quickly. Some of us can’t even remember why we walked into the kitchen this morning. We forget promises, stories, people, even how we got where we are. When we forget, we become entitled. We think we deserve the life we have. We earned all of it, and others, too, should earn their life as we did. But God says, “No, no. You were lifted. You were Carried. You were Chosen. You were forgiven, maybe multiple times. You were brought through the wilderness by a God who neither slumbered nor slept.”
Making Fashion Sense
Now I’m not exactly fashionable, I still own socks from the last century, but I once met an old tailor in a small village who kept a faded photo of himself as a child pinned to the wall above his sewing machine. I asked him why. He said, “I like to stitch new clothes, so when someone walks in here with torn clothes to be mended, I don’t want to refuse them nor look down upon them, I want to remember the boy who once had none or little clothes to wear.” That’s the first reading we heard today in human form.
Remembering is the gateway to mercy. When we forget, we become harsh. When we remember, we become kind. God doesn’t want us to remember our past so we can feel ashamed. No, He wants us to recognize it so we can act with depth, so we don’t float through life like consumers, but stand in it like witnesses.
God's request today is not complex: love Him, walk with Him, and serve Him. The doorway to all that is remembering—remembering where we were when God found us, remembering who we were before He called us, and remembering how far we have come because He never gave up.
Open Your Spiritual Trunk
So maybe the most spiritual thing you can do today isn’t pray harder or read more Scripture. Maybe it’s to sit still, open that trunk in your soul, yes, the one stuffed under your spiritual bed, between the resentment you meant to forgive and the prayer life you meant to restart, and say: “Lord… remind me who I was… and who You’ve made me to be.”
Once we remember, we will never look at the world the same way or treat people the same way.
- Today’s Readings
Father Boby's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. You can view the Mass (and the Rosary at the 30-minute mark) on the Family Rosary YouTube page.
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