In his Conversations, composed as a Redemptorist novice, Little Văn writes,

It is necessary not to forget it [a certain spiritual truth] again and again and, for that, ask little Jesus to give you a little more memory.

He was forgetting a particular spiritual truth; but he was also forgetting how he had lived it and how he could have lived it. The two issues are always linked. We forget truths in the abstract as we forget how they have been or could have been lived.

It’s like the philosophical problem of essence and existence. There are both. We forget one in the proportion that we forget the other. Both problems run side by side. We can’t forget what things are without forgetting how they’ve been. And we can’t remember very well without that link, either.

So what is Little Văn saying?

Jesus can give us memory. This is not just a physical augmentation of our abilities. This is not a “mere” physical miracle. No, far from it! Memory is linked to our purification and our simplification in Christ. Memory is related to our transformation and transfiguration in Christ. The faculties are taken up into the Love of God, who lets us see and “remember” the truths of eternal life in what has gone before us.

We shouldn’t forget things from the perspective of Eternity; whatever can be seen from that perspective, we should, as the seasons are appropriate, remember. But if we do forget, we know where to go:

 [A]sk little Jesus to give you a little more memory.

He is our brother, and our father loves to give us good things.

Also, Little Văn died on 10 July 1959: let’s remember him, too!

Some related posts:

• Saint Augustine and Saint John of the Cross: Memory
• Looking Back on the Past
• Memory and Existence