We Need Rituals

It was a rainy midwestern Sunday and we were cutting rhubarbs in the backyard of my grandparent's home. Since my grandmother died, the large stalks had gone unattended slowly encroaching on the neighbor's lot line. Back when she first planted them 20 years ago they were just a small cluster but now they were a veritable wall of plants, even with our hacking.

I don’t often think about rhubarbs, but as I was cutting stalks by the garbage bag full, I was running off lists of recipes.

“My mom used to can fruit,” I said vaguely as I loaded another armful into the open car, “but I don’t have any of the equipment since she died.”

“My mom made a raspberry rhubarb jam. It doesn’t need to be canned,” my husband, Al quipped. Of course, no one had replicated it since she died because where on earth are you hoping to find 16 cups of rhubarb? The answer: obviously from my grandfather.

As we waited for a text back from my father-in-law with the recipe, Al regaled me with stories about the jam. It was a bright red and sticky sweet from the lush harvest of fresh fruits. The house would smell heavenly as the large pot would simmer on the stove. Although she hadn't made it in the years before her passing, Al could recall the taste with perfect memory as we drove home from my grandfather's house.

It was a fiasco getting everything we needed into the large cauldron that I inherited from my mother, but eventually, the act was done and soon we were both sweating over a pot of bubbling jam. Which did, in fact, smell heavenly.

The Act of Remembering

This anecdote has become a pivotal memory in our young marriage. Yes, it was a sweet moment when we worked together in our cramped unairconditioned apartment kitchen, but we were both struck by how such a simple action could be so significant. Unintentionally, we were able to evoke powerful memories of our deceased loved ones. It was as though we could feel our mothers and grandmothers around us around that pot of rhubarb jam.

We are taught to honor and pray for the dead, but performing traditions and rituals are equally important. This is not just from a religious standpoint. Psychology Today stated, rather beautifully, “[o]ne of the most important features of rituals is that they do not only mark time; they create time.”

Merely remembering is not enough. The act of remembering means not only having recall of past events but also acting on them. James 2:17 states, “[e]ven so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” Catholicism is all about tradition and memory, but also dynamism that is imbued throughout all our actions. It is not enough to just know, it is important to live.

Hoc in Memoriam Mei

There is a moment in every Mass when the priest consecrates the bread and wine. At that precise instant, the bread and wine become the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. It is the holiest moment as Christ's presence in heaven becomes one with his presence on Earth. In that one breathtaking moment, we are no longer alone but surrounded by the presence of God.

In those words of consecration, He tells us to take and eat, take and drink for it is Christ's body and blood, but "as often as you shall do these things, do them in memory of Me."

Although the consecration is the source and summit of Catholicism, maybe the ritual of the Mass is just as important. Just like how some overripe rhubarbs with a recipe made from one son's memory can evoke such powerful feelings of love, maybe the ritual of the Mass is more than just a ceremony; perhaps it is a sacred memory.

God knows it isn’t enough to just leave us His scriptures and His saints, He also gives Himself. Actions follow words. Actions create rituals. And with these sacred rituals, there is such power.

But rhubarb jam is not going to bring you to tears like me, so create your own rituals.

Haec quotiescumque feceritis, in mei memoriam facietis.