The Flame of Remembrance
Poem★★★The other day I saw a cross atop a church set in the midst of a city’s hurrying throngs. To myself I said: “It is a cross, I never noticed it before.
No one notices it. A cross, a remembrance of the cross on which Jesus died.” And I recalled a passage in Philip Gibbs’ European Journey: “We walked up the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. . . . Under the Arc built to commemorate Napoleon’s victories a little flame was leaping, seeming to go out now and then, and then rising again from some hidden fire.
It is the Flame of Remembrance for the millions of young Frenchmen who fell in the First World War. The traffic surged around it unceasingly. No hat lifted, so far as we could see, because of that leaping flame and its message of the dead. The taxis hooted.
Humanity went on its way. Even the flame was dimmed by brighter lights down the Champs-Elysées advertising automobiles de luxe.” The Holy Communion is our reminder, “lest we forget.”
The point
Just as an eternal flame in Paris is often ignored amid busy traffic, the cross is easily overlooked—Communion calls us to remember.