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2nd Sunday of Easter Year A - 27/4/2014 - Gospel: Jn 20: 29
Make it alive
For our memory to work our mind needs to encode information, store and later retrieve it. Encoding allows the information we receive from the outside world to reach our mind and the mind will put it into the encoding process and store in the memory. Finally the mind will retrieve the information when we made a request or sometimes a reminder could trigger the memory that we somehow had forgotten. Once I went through my old stuff and found many items were good for nothing and at the bottom of the cupboard I stumbled upon to a pile of old photos. These photos serve as reminders from my childhood memory. I had spent so much time looking at these photos that my clean up didn't get finished. Images in these photos seem to be alive in my head with memories of the faces of my friends, different sceneries and significant individual habits came to life such as the games we played and the food we enjoyed were all presented in my head. Old time conversations with promises made to see each other again returned but because the war escalated and each of us scattered to an unknown direction we have no news of some friends since that dispersing.

Old photos served as a bridge to connect time of the pass to the present. It has the power to waken significant events of the pass and helps the memory to replay it in our mind. Every time we think of the good old days things of the pass return. Refugees or migrants know it well, especially when they feel homesick or lonely. Things of the pass came to mind and they can see it, feel it and live in that moment.

The disciples of Jesus felt very much the same. They lived with the memory of the good old days when Jesus was with them. The Risen Christ appeared to them in a new form namely a gardener, a pedestrian or a beach stroller. They could not recognize Jesus because their minds recorded the Crucified Christ, not the Resurrection Christ but when He called them by name or reminded them of the pass they had had with Him, their memory flooded back and they encoded the new information and recognized the Risen Christ.

We can make alive many good things in our faith journey, namely the confirmation, first Holy Communion, wedding ceremony or vows because they are important and they remind us of God's grace and love in our lives. Easter is the time to recall these significant events and make them alive in our lives. We give thanks to God for these good moments that we remember and cherish. Memory ties our past with present, and provides a framework for the future and makes us who we are. Memory isn't a "thing" we can touch but rather it is an event actually happening to us personally. What seems to be a single memory is actually a complex construction. When the apostles remembered about the Last Supper their brains retrieve the location, the actions of Jesus, what he said and the reactions from others apostles. Each part of the "Last Supper" came to life from a different region of the brain. The entire image of the "Last Supper" is actively reconstructed. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we recall the Last Super of Christ in memory of Him. The more you make the faith events alive the more you are at home with God's love and grace.

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