Re-Membering in Action: Liturgy and Healing of Hurt Memories

We experience around us situations of violence, pain, suffering, and injustice. Some of these experiences often leave individual and/or communal memories hurt in many different ways. The consequence is that when these hurt memories live with us they begin to shape our identity and selfhood from the perspective of wounded persons. Overlooking these experiences or burying them to amnesia can lead to the denial of what we are truly called to be. Remembering well these memories with hope for a better future in the presence of the risen Lord would be a source of healing for both individuals and communities. This essay posits liturgy as the means by which we can re-member the past to the present and so look to the future with hope of healing. This is so because liturgy has the capacity to bring the participants in the ritual to the past event as a present encounter. Through symbols, gestures, words, songs, and materials used in the ritual, in a concrete manner the participants receive what they are ritualizing in reality. In this way liturgy can give a body to memory, say what words cannot master to say, and to hope for what would be hopeless: healing of hurt memories. This is a theological reflection on the relationship between liturgy and healing of hurt memories through the path of forgiveness. It posits that through liturgy, forgiveness can be given a body and so through forgiveness the Church can offer new life in the face of horrifying hurt memories.