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In this jubilee year, Pope Francis has invited each of us to be a pilgrim of hope. In this spirit, the Young Adult Initiative will publish monthly blogs related to the jubilee year and our role as pilgrims on the journey.

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A couple of semesters ago, two of our Saint Meinrad seminarians would walk the length of campus while praying the Rosary together. They would try to go on a “Rosary walk” every day, and sometimes they would invite another seminarian or a coworker to join. Each time they completed a walk, they would place a stone in the grass outside St. Bede Hall on the edge of campus.

I remember them excitedly telling me one day that they couldn’t wait to see how large the rock pile would get by the time they graduated. I offered to add a few rocks to the pile for the Rosaries I prayed on my way to work, but they said no – this pile was for prayers said at Saint Meinrad while walking around campus.

See, it wasn’t about the height of the rocks in the end. It was about the prayers and the community that prayed them. It was a way for these prayers to be memorialized and made present each time someone saw the growing pile of rocks.

It was a way to remember.

Memory is a liturgical action. It’s how we experience the reality of the ongoing Paschal Mystery, the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord that manifests our salvation. Each time we gather for the Eucharist and do as Christ bids us “in memory of Him,” we are present at the one, perfect, definitive, and efficacious sacrifice of the Cross. We are there again and again, but also for the first time. What a beautiful mystery we have in our faith!

It's interesting to think about memory in the context of a Jubilee Year.

A Jubilee Year is a time to remember what God has done for us and the purpose of our very creation: freedom, fullness, communion – abundant life.

When our ancestors in faith, the Israelites, were given the Jubilee Year, the Lord bid them to “…treat this year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to your own property, each of you to your own family…you shall not sow, nor shall you reap the aftergrowth or pick the untrimmed vines, since this is the jubilee. It shall be sacred for you. You may only eat what the field yields of itself.” (Leviticus 25:10-12)

When the Israelites followed the jubilee practices – when they freed the captives, returned the land to its owners, rested from working the land, and depended on God’s providence to eat – they would naturally recall how the Lord brought them out of bondage in Egypt, established a covenant with them, provided water and manna in the desert, and promised them a land of their own.

But how often did the Israelites forget the goodness of God?

How often do you and I?

The Lord knows how easily we forget His action in our lives.

He gives Moses the power to part the Red Sea and lead the Israelites to safety in Exodus 14. A chapter later, they are complaining about their hardship, regretting leaving Egypt, and doubting God’s love. Right after He literally parts a sea for them.

After Moses dies, Joshua takes up the mantle of leadership to bring the Israelites into their promised land. With the Lord’s help, the whole nation crosses the Jordan River on dry ground, much like their parents’ generation crossed the Red Sea. When they arrive at their camp site, the Lord tells Joshua to have the people gather memorial stones. Joshua tells one leader from each tribe:

“Go to the Jordan riverbed in front of the ark of the LORD, your God; lift to your shoulders one stone apiece, so that they will equal in number the tribes of the Israelites. In the future, these are to be a sign among you.

When your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ you shall answer them, ‘The waters of the Jordan ceased to flow before the ark of the covenant of the LORD when it crossed the Jordan.’ Thus these stones are to serve as a perpetual memorial to the Israelites.”

Joshua 4:5-7

He wants us to remember.

Remembering leads us to trust. Trust, to love. Love, to worship. And worship leads us to communion with Him.

In this Jubilee Year, what memorial stones do you need to establish in your heart to remember what the Lord has done in your life?