The response to today's responsorial Psalm perceptively links love and remembrance: "Lord, remember us for the love you bear your people".

In the Bible, whenever the verb "remember" occurs, the subject is almost always God. God is a God who remembers, while, like Israel our ancestors in the faith, we human beings, even we Christians, are inclined to forget.

What God remembers is not our sins but his own promise, his own faithfulness and fidelity to the covenant he made with Israel and has continued in Jesus to make with us. All that God does is done in love. So God remembers us in love and loves us by keeping us in the Holy Spirit, who has been poured out into our souls (Rom 5:5).

It is a lovely and enriching thought that the Holy Spirit is the memory of the Church, a doctrine that comes to us from Jesus himself: "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you" (Jn 14:26). Thus we can only celebrate the Eucharist in memory of Jesus by invoking the Holy Spirit upon our gifts of bread and wine.