In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In this especially rich season of liturgical memory, beloved in the Lord, with the feast of the Transfiguration just behind us and the feast of the Dormition just before us, I have in mind to share with you this morning some thoughts on the discipline of memory. After 21 years here, I think you’ve figured out by now that this is one of my obsessions: the function of memory in identity. But my interest in pursuing my subject with you this morning was partly spawned by the recent comment of someone currently running for president of the United States. He belongs to that majority of people who are running for the president of the United States.

This past week this politician declared—and I quote; I listened to it several times to make sure I got it right, because it’s probably the most subtle thing that’s been said by a politician in my lifetime. This is what he said: “We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.” I listened to it repeatedly, wrote it down, read it again. I found this declaration truly interesting in several ways, especially the distinction between truth and facts. You know how refreshing it is to hear somebody declare that they’re not the same thing? I mean, this is marvelous! He knows the difference between truth and facts! Most people do not. This is so important and so neglected a distinction that I was a bit surprised to hear a politician insisting on it.

The comment encouraged me to hope that, at last, our current political season might prove to be more significant than usual. Indeed, I confess to a sense of disappointment when this politician’s campaign announced that he had later misspoken and subsequently retracted this statement. Disappointment, I say, because his comment provided me with point one of today’s sermon. Before I go on to address point one, however, let me mention in passing that science is exactly the field where I would look for facts and not truth, and fiction is precisely the place where I would look for truth and not facts. Truth is something that can be known; facts are things that can be known about. In any case, let us at least agree that there is more truth in good fiction than there is in bad science.

This brings me to point one: Truth and memory. To illustrate this relationship between truth and memory, let me begin with a personal memory. I hope this story will not bore you; if it does, you just have to be bored. In early autumn of 1965, I arrived in Paris, the Gare du Nord had just taken the boat train from Cherbourg, traveling through Normandy where my ancestors came from. One of the first sites I visited on that trip to Paris was to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a venerable location on the Left Bank. This building, originally a monastic church founded by Clovis in the year 543, before there was a Normandy, is the burial site for several of the Merovingian kings.

I had another reason for going to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I had in mind to visit the tomb of the textual historian and paleographer Jean Mabillon. Mabillon was one of the heroes of my youth. I had recently finished a substantial biography of him. In fact, the Metro station around the corner from the church is called the Mabillon station. I found Mabillon’s tomb under the south wall toward the back of the nave in a little alcove called the Chapelle de Saint-Benoit, and I was surprised to discover that René Descartes was buried beside him. Also buried there, on the opposite side of Descartes, was Bernard de Montfaucon, one of the most brilliant and gifted historians and linguists of his time. Among other things Montfaucon was the editor of the works of St. John Chrysostom.

I was young at the time. I hope it is needless to say that this visit to Saint-Germain-des-Prés made a deep impression on my young Kentucky countrified mind, and my soul fed on that experience for years, even decades to come. Roughly three and a half decades later, now accompanied by my wife, I returned to the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in June of 2003. Denise and I, thanks to the generosity of a senior editor of Touchstone, were staying at a hotel over on the Rue de Rivoli, just across the street from the northwest corner of the Louvre. We took the purple line of the Metro system which runs under the Seine River and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, over to the Left Bank, and we disembarked off the Metro at the Mabillon station.

So far, so good. My memory was solid. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Then we entered the church, and that’s when the trouble began. We walked over to the place under the south wall, but there was no Chapelle-de-Saint-Benoit, there was no alcove where it was supposed to be, nor were the bodies of Mabillon, Descartes, and Montfaucon where I had left them. [Laughter] Indeed, it took some little time to find them. When you leave dead bodies some place and you come back, you sort of think they’ll still be there. Over the ensuing years, those three bodies had somehow managed to migrate about 60 feet to the east! And the memorial stones did not look at all like I remembered them. They were lying there in order, those three, in that order—I got that right. The stones were a different color, and to this day I still can’t remember whether the inscriptions were in Latin or in French, because I remember it both ways! [Laughter] Now this wasn’t fair. Corpses can usually be relied on to stay put. These three gentlemen, however, had conspired to deceive me. I don’t know how they did it, but they moved 60 feet in 35 years, and apparently no one noticed it until I came in and discovered: Hey, they’ve moved!

Now how can this be? My memory of that first visit was intense and bright, with a clarity of truth. My heart and my mind had fed on that truth for many years. I had become a different person for having enjoyed that experience and incorporated it into my soul. It was part of my memory, that is to say, part of who I am: a determining factor in who I am. But, you see, if the substance and meaning of truth is accuracy, then my memory was an illusion. But the truth in my memory was not an illusion, because truth is not the same thing as accuracy. In mathematics, I want accuracy; that’s what I want in mathematics. That’s what I want in science. That’s what I want in technology and engineering: I want accuracy—but that is not truth, because accuracy can be provided in a whole bunch of ways that are not human. The memory contained in an electronic device can give me tons of accuracy, but a computer will never yield me a single ounce of truth.

We are still, I’m afraid, suffering from this illusion of Descartes himself, that the world is divided between subjects and objects. You see, when we know the truth we’re part of the truth; we’re persons. We’re part of the truth when we know the truth. Precision is not the same thing as knowledge; accuracy is not the same thing as understanding; and being exact is a very different thing from being wise.

Now the story I just told you, I’ll bet every one of you has a story like that. I won’t ask for a show of hands, because I’ll bet a bunch of you have stories like that. Maybe not every one of you; perhaps the little guys don’t.

We are not computers. Our own minds are part of what we remember. There is an active component in memory, and there’s an active, assimilating component in every act of knowledge. That’s why all cognition is re-cognition. We create our memories. Indeed, every time a human being brings a memory back to mind, it is a re-interpretation, because he is a different person; he’s had experiences since then which qualify and nuance the memory. It is a re-interpretation; it is a creative act of knowledge. That’s why this week I was so encouraged, at least for about 12 hours until the campaign said, “No, we didn’t mean that,” that somebody said he was more interested in truth than in facts.

Let me cite a better known example. In October of 1815, a young English poet borrowed a copy of George Chapman’s translation of Homer. Fascinated by the work, he stayed up reading it all night long, unable to put the book down. As the sun was rising that morning, he finally put the book aside and composed a sonnet about the experience. Let me quote you only the sestet of that sonnet. I want you to listen to it, please, very closely, and I’m going to ask you a question about it. Listen to the sestet.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims within its ken
Or, like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silence, on a peak in Darien.

I think these have to be among the loveliest words in the English language. But did anybody see a problem with them? There was something there claimed that was not accurate. Anybody? Because everybody here should know, certainly everybody who got through sixth grade should know, because I think that’s when we took it. “Stout Cortez” did not discover the Pacific; it was Balboa. You see, truth is not the same thing as accuracy.

One sees in this—not just this sestet, but the entire sonnet—his illustration of something that John Keats wrote in another poem: Truth is beauty and beauty truth”—this is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Now if Keats had remembered it was Balboa, he could have saved himself some trouble, because “Balboa” actually fits the meter; “Cortez” does not. That’s why he had to make Cortez stout in order to throw in an extra syllable. The truth of this poem has nothing to do—absolutely zero to do—with its historical accuracy. Truth, including the truth preserved in memory, is of a different order from precision or accuracy.

It is often the case, beloved, that our memories become less accurate in time, even as we understand them better. And we understand them better by remembering, because each time we remember them, we are different. We’re different. We are developing what the Greeks call charakter, which is internal shape, character.

Point two: the interiorization of history. To illustrate this point, I’m going to tell another story, this one a bit shorter and more succinctly to the point. Let me read a few verses from the Gospel according to Luke that I’ve been pondering all this past week. “So it was, as soon as the days of his liturgical service were completed,” hai hemerai tes leitourgias—it’s a Greek word: hai hemerai tes leitourgias, the days of his liturgical service—were completed “that Zachary departed to his own house. Now after these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, and she went into hiding for five months.” She went into seclusion for five months: periekryven; she went into hiding—it’s an imperfect tense—for five months. So she went into seclusion for five months.

I talk to you about Elizabeth with great satisfaction. Elizabeth is one of my absolute favorite people. Before point two is over, I will tell you my debt to Elizabeth. The Bible doesn’t say much about her, but what it says is fascinating. In Hebrew, her name is Elisheva. She’s named for the ancient Elisheva, who was the wife of Aaron. That’s curious itself. Those are the sort of details that jump out of the Bible at you. Her name was Elisheva; she was the daughter of Amminadab. Now, that name you should recognize right away because you get that in the genealogy of Jesus. Amminadab begat Nahshon. Aminadab, that’s the tribe of Judah, even though there’s a law in the Torah, the high priest can only be married to a daughter of Levi, Aaron himself was married to a Judahite. And then I further reflected. It took away my breath when I reflected on it this week. She’s the grandmother of Phinehas. Oh my goodness! The great Phinehas! Elisheva was his grandma. I’m trying to assimilate that, that the great Phinehas sat on the lap of Elisheva.

Now, the New Testament Elizabeth, as soon as she became pregnant, began a five-month retreat. Elizabeth went into her soul to ponder the mystery that was taking place in her body. Fortunately, her house was quiet. They didn’t have any other kids, and her husband has just been struck dumb by the Archangel Gabriel for nine months. [Laughter] So she wasn’t going to get any guff from her husband. Let that be a lesson for all of you: Do not cross archangels! They’re a little bit sensitive. [Laughter] So for nine months, he’s not going to say anything, so Elizabeth has lots of quiet time. I wonder if some of you would like to have that same grace. [Laughter]

This, let us remember, is the mother of John the Baptist. In our reflection on John the Baptist, we may learn something about his mother. Elizabeth! I love her name, especially in Spanish: Elisabel. In the person of Elizabeth, I see the active discipline of memory. What was happening in her life and in her home, she made the substance of her inner life. And what was the effect of her private retreat? Well, her son’s picture stands at the front of every Orthodox church throughout the world. Elizabeth was responsible for that man! Now, ponder that for a bit.

It would be impossible, I think, to overestimate the importance of Elizabeth in the prayer life of Christians. Many times during the day, times beyond counting, I say, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!” I have no idea how many times a day I say that. Just start with the rosary, which I pray every day; just start with the Angelus. Any of these—just open any Orthodox prayer book, see how often those lines appear: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” And when she said that, according to Luke, she was full of the Holy Spirit. Full of the Holy Spirit: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

Think of how many millions of Christians, since apostolic times, have made that their prayer many times a day! Think of how often those words appear in the hymnography of the Orthodox Church! This prayer to the holy Theotokos emerges from Elizabeth’s five-month retreat, during which she actively created her own memory of God’s intervention in her life. Her own prayerful and disciplined memory was incorporated into the deposit of faith, the faith once handed down to the saints. Elizabeth’s memory is at the absolute heart of the identity of the Church.

I would talk about Elizabeth for the rest of the day, but we have a Liturgy to do. Let me recommend a chapter called “Spirit-filled Elizabeth” in a book called Christ in His Saints if you have time to pursue that.

Point three: Today’s story of the feeding of the multitude in the desert. Who wrote the gospel that the deacon read today? Anybody paid attention there? Holy Gospel according to—? [Mark.] Mark, okay. You see, the prescribed gospel for today is the story as it appears in Matthew 14. I deliberately changed it to the same account in Mark 6. Now, why did I do that? I did this for a very specific reason. I don’t think priests should just go around changing the readings on a whim; I had a serious reason for doing that. Mark’s version includes details not found in Matthew’s; it’s the same story, but Mark’s nuance is different. If I did not change it, there would be absolutely no occasion to speak to you about Mark 6, and, in fact, I’ve been here 21 years and this is the first time I’ve preached on Mark 6. It’d be a shame to miss that. Here’s how Mark begins this account this morning.

Then the apostles gathered to Jesus and told him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught, and he said to them, “Come aside by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” There were many coming and going. They did not even have time to eat, so departed in a boat to a secluded place by themselves.

In other words, Jesus took them out in the desert to get them away from the crowd. The crowd, however, figured it out and got there first. The Greek word translated as “rest,” it’s anapavesthe. If you listen closely, you hear the word “pause” in there, anapavesthe, pause. You see, “pause” is something more than a button on your remote; it’s a serious theological concept: to pause. Only Mark’s account includes this detail. Jesus had in mind to take the apostles to a deserted place where they could retreat oligon, for a while, so they would not be consumed by the ministry itself. Otherwise the apostles, Jesus knew, were in danger of burnout, and burnout is a real danger for people in many professions, and sometimes even in homes. We have special cares in homes, and parents burn out; I’ve seen it. I saw it in some of my own family. I mean, the family I was raised in, and especially among cousins’ families.

To avoid burnout, it was necessary to withdraw for a spell, to go inside, give themselves to leisured reflection, to learn the discipline of memory, to take the measure of their recent experiences. Human beings, beloved, are not machines, and they should not treat themselves or one another like machines. If they do, their lives and certainly their apostolate will come to nothing. It is imperative that they develop what Dom Jean-Bautist Chautard called “the soul of the apostolate.” This pursuit includes the discipline of memory, the deliberate cultivation of inner life, the interiorization of history, particularly our personal history.

Descartes was wrong. Things are not distinguished between subjects and objects. When we know the truth, we know the truth because we’re part of the truth, because we live in the truth. The truth is transmitted to us through the experiences of history. We learn these, we reflect upon them, and, reflecting on truth and memory, and making our resolutions on the truth, we structure our own lives; we give shape to our own souls; and we grow in God’s image and likeness, for this is the truth. Amen.