Saturday, October 18, 2008

memory eternal

today sarted off by my husband and i attending a 40 day memorial service for one of our parishioners.at the end of the service we did the memorial part where the priest prays and pours wine over a mixture of wheat,nuts, breadcrumbs and honey anyways toward the end of the service we sing "memory eternal" three times and father chants and may our memory be eternal from generation to generation.
i have never understood this part our we saying this for the sake of God, the dead or the living.
it can't be for God because he knows we are with him his son Jesus said all our hairs are numbered by him,he holds us in the palm of his hand and he considers us the apple of his eye. so its not for his sake.
could it be for the sake of the dead, well from what i understand even when we are dead we still need the prayers of the living to interceed for us, this is one of those things i'm not really all that clear about becuse when our time comes to be judged it will be between God and us and we will have to answer for our sins.
maybe its for the sake of the living because we are attached to the world and our lifes and have a need to be remembered. we need monuments and memorials and want our future generations to remember who we were.
back in the 70s there was a song it said "dust in the wind all we are is dust in the wind everything is dust in the wind. don't hang on nothing last forever but the earth and skis we drift away and all your money wont another minute buy."
i tend to like this song from what i understand we were put on this earth to glorify God by leaving his mark not ours on this world by touching other peoples lives. maybe i've missed the whole point of this song today maybe i'm making to much out of it.Benjamin Franklin said it doesn't matter what the future say about us we will be long gone and not hear it.

2 comments:

Fr. Peter said...

Memory Eternal is so we do not forget the person who has fallen asleep until we meet again. We indeed pray for the dead and that is why we have the 40 days but the memory eternal is so the memory of the person does not fade away.

linda said...

i think this may have made it clearer to me but i need time to think about this.linda