Today is Dia de los Muertos. While my family does not celebrate Dia de los Muertos, the importance of this holiday to so many Catholics—especially so many Catholics living in the United States—makes it a day of importance to me as well.
Inspired by the example of those for whom today is a day of remembering and honoring their beloved dead, I am thinking a lot about our collective memory not just as Catholics but also as persons living in the United States. I am thinking about what it would look like for the Church to truly embody Metz’s desire for it to be the institutional bearer of the dangerous memory not just of Christ’s crucifixion, but also of the suffering of the living and the dead. I am thinking about how we should be accountable to the memory not just of those whose names we knew, but also of those whose names have been forgotten and all but erased from consciousness. What would it mean for the Church to be a body that remembers those whom the “official” histories of progress and patriotism forget? To be a body that remembers the “crucified peoples” of history? On Dia de los Muertos, I think it is especially important to ask these questions in light of the nearly forgotten fact of the lynching of Mexican-descended persons at the hands of white mobs and governmental bodies. We have forgotten both that this happened and that such events were vitally important to the establishment both of U.S. borders and of U.S. identity. Even worse, we have forgotten how much these victims of lynching resemble the suffering of Christ on the cross. (more…)
