Lent and the purification of memory

On Dec. 20, 2002, I was at lunch in the papal department when the wide-ranging conversation John Paul II always encouraged took an unexpected turn, with the pope asking me how President Ronald Reagan was doing. As it happened, I had recently run into Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese, and had asked the same question. The answer was a sad one.

Meese had been to the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and had brought one of the traditional baseball caps with the ship’s name on it back to the former president. Reagan, ever the gentleman, thanked Meese and then said, “But Ed, why would anyone name a ship after me?” The Alzheimer’s that would kill him a few years later had obliterated his memory to the point where Ronald Reagan had no recollection of having been president of the United States for eight years.

When I related this story, John Paul, sitting directly across from me, looked utterly stricken, and what seemed a full minute’s silence ensued. The pope was in tough physical shape from Parkinson’s disease. But it was as if he now imagined a worse fate than being locked in an increasingly frozen body: a life in which he had lost the capacity to reflect on his life. The silence was broken by John Paul quietly asking me to “please let Mrs. Reagan know that I am praying for her husband” — a message I conveyed through Ed Meese on my return home.

That vignette puts a prayer once familiar to many Catholics, the Suscipe of St. Ignatius Loyola, into striking relief:

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given to me: I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these, I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more.

I learned the Suscipe as a boy, and I must confess that, for a half-century, I balked at the idea of offering the Lord my memory. It seemed a bridge too far, a self-immolation of an almost suicidal character. What would be left of me if I lost my memory? I could lose my liberty and still be me. I could lose what little understanding of things I had gained and still be me, for I could always understand better. As for losing my willfulness, well, it would surely be a blessing if the divine will took over in my life, unreservedly. But my memory?

On the surface, John Paul II’s reaction to my telling him of President Reagan’s loss of memory suggests that he, too, choked, at least metaphorically, at the idea of losing his memory in addition to his mobility.

The coming of Lent, however, suggests that the gift of one’s memory to God involves the constant purification of memory over a lifetime, as a saint like John Paul surely knew.

The annual 40-day pilgrimage through the desert of Lent, patterned on the Lord’s forty days in the Judaean wilderness in preparation for his public ministry, is the preeminent moment in the Church’s year of grace for the purification of memory — especially our memories of the successes and failures of living missionary discipleship since Pentecost 2024 closed last year’s season of paschal celebration.

As I note in Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches, Lent, as presently constituted in the sacred liturgy, divides into two periods. The first two and a half weeks ask us to conduct an extensive examination of conscience: What in me needs purification if I am to become more effectively the missionary disciple I was baptized to be? What is the dross in my soul that must be incinerated to make me as transparent a witness to the love of Christ as I ought to be?

Lent’s second half has a baptismal character. As we prepare to receive the blessing of Easter water, which is baptismal water, at the Easter Vigil or on Easter Sunday, our purified memories enable us to encounter anew, and in greater depth, Christ’s thirst for us (as in the Lenten Gospel story of the woman at the well), Christ’s enlightenment of us (as in the Lenten Gospel story of the man born blind), and Christ’s power over death (as in the Lenten Gospel story of Lazarus).

The Lord purifies our memory so that we can, in due course, “see his face…and…reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:4-5).

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