Since our conversation last week touched on spring cleaning, I would like to keep digging into this particular gold mine. This time, I will focus on the other side of this intentional act of internal sorting. On the one hand, we have spoken of the things we need to dispose of. On the other hand, we need to discuss the things that are dear to us, the things that truly matter, and thus we have to cherish them. In an unsorted life, the good stuff may be mixed with the trivial, and thus we may fail to appreciate the worth of what we have. Worse, in our mad rush to declutter, we might be throwing out veritable treasures. I have heard stories about jewelry that had been wrapped in tissue paper and had been unknowingly thrown in the trash bin. Therefore, as we reflect on the important elements of our inventories, we must identify these important things and separate them from the clutter. In the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, we find the “Suscipe” prayer, the first lines of which, translated in English, are rendered as “Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will.” In this prayer of surrender, we can deduce from St. Ignatius that these are things that should matter to us. This includes our memory, intelligence, and our agency (our ability to act on our behalf). In this prayer, we choose to offer to the Lord these precious and important things—rather than keep them for ourselves—and let Him use them as he pleases. Instead of looking at surrender as merely giving things up, a deeper understanding of faith allows us to value these things as worthy offerings that can be utilized by our God. In this light, memory matters. To live an unexamined life, without an appreciation of our past, might rob us of the treasure from memories that we can find extremely useful. We may have our traumas, which makes us afraid of going on a journey through our hurts and pains, but in that space lies buried treasures as well, valuable lessons that have the potential to shape us into better people. For all the negativity that we associate with technology, I argue that the power it has to capture (and sort) memories through pictures is powerful. However, having tons of photos alone does not comprise an examined life. If we learn how to write down our thoughts and feelings, then these data from our past will have context, thus producing the building blocks of insight. My advice here is to learn how to write things down in a journal. This brings us to the next point: our understanding matters. Intelligence is not simply the “parroting” of data which includes biblical passages, Catechism, or our favorite sound bites from our favorite speakers. It involves our understanding of these. For them to truly matter to us, then they have to be reflected on and can be adequately articulated. This means that we have to keep on striving to pattern our mental efforts to what we attribute to St. Anselm: “Fides quaerens intellectum” or faith seeking understanding. Rote memorization, which I understand as mindless—as opposed to mindful— repetition, may not be the best approach to growing the seed planted in our baptism. However, as we widen our reading and reflection, we can connect the dots of all that we know (including our memories) thus enriching us with deeper insights and more intelligible explanations of our Christian belief. In our agency, our freedom to respond to God’s daily invitation to follow him, let’s make a clear choice not to throw away our past as well as our quest to understand our faith a little better each day. That makes a worthy offering to the Lord, for they are part of the dearest things that comprise who we are as human beings.
