Remember Who
You Are
I was 8 years-old when the
first version of The Lion King came out. It was a favorite movie not just for
my sister and I, but for my parents as well. When my younger brother watched it
years later, he liked it so much that he would watch it repeatedly on DVD. I
just watched the new version the other day.
This time around I
projected into the film various religious themes, but most strikingly, I saw an
allegory for the spiritual life in how Simba first loses his sense of identity
from the trauma of losing his father, and then regains it along with courage
and a sense of mission by remembering and accepting he was the son of Mufasa,
and destined to be king.
We are God’s children, and
anointed as kings at baptism because Christ shares with us everything: His
Father and his kingdom. Yet how easy it is to forget...
“Remember who you are,”
were the powerful words that echoed in Simba’s heart. For St Augustine, the act
of remembering was also very important. For him, memory was a force that
connects our past to our present, and by God’s grace, opens us up into hope.
Yet, willingly at times we
repress memories, like Simba did for years, trying to forget the accident of
his father’s death. Sometimes, we forget unwillingly; we wish at times we could
better retain good experiences and people we have met.
St. Augustine in The
Confessions, with the help of God, tries to explore his memory seeking God in
the past events of his life. He concluded that God was already within him: “Late
have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new: late have I loved you! And see,
you were within me, but I was outside and it was there that I searched for
you.”
Remember who you are...
Let us call to mind and heart, again and again, that we are children of God!
God bless, Fr. Carlos, OSA
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