As human life span is increasing, so also the rate of people suffering from alzheimer’s disease. Gradual loosing of the memory is so humiliating. You see people disoriented, slowly loosing connection, not only with the past but also with the present. With regard to the future, being unable to envision a destination and recall it, they endanger themselves especially when they escape the attention of those caring for them and end up walking in the streets unaware of whither they are going. Everybody knows exactly what I am speaking about; it is so common.

However, another type of alzheimer’s that might be even more common and with more fatal consequences the Christian Alzheimer’s Disease! Just look at Europe today. It is not even able to remember its Christian identity and its Christian roots (you remember the European Constitution that, thank God, has never been approved?). In the West, we speak of the need for re-evangelisation, as it is a question of recalling people of the Good News, of their Baptism, of their true and noble identity as God’s adoptive sons and daughters. Yet, the Christian Alzheimer’s Disease is getting all the more acute. Look around you, amongst the members of your own family, not to say: look at the mirror! Don’t you see disoriented Christians: with two sets of values, the one they profess when they say they are Christians, and the one they witness by their personal day to day choices? Don’t you see Christians that are disconnected: holding holy images and statutes, making the sign of the Cross and maybe even saying some prayer before sleeping and yet practically separated from the Christian Community, the Church?

Maybe the promise of Jesus, on the eve of His departure, of sending the Holy Spirit that will “recall to you all that I have said”, has never been so relevant as in our age and times. The Holy Spirit is our memory, He is the memory of the Christian Community, the Church. We need Him to remind us our true identity. We need Him to get us re-connected to our old roots. If the tree is severed from its roots, it cannot bear fruit, indeed it withers and dies. We badly need the Holy Spirit, because we need to recover our Christian memory. Just imagine what humanity would look like if Christianity disintegrate as some prophets of doom prognosticate…. That will be the day: a humanity suffering from a pandemic alzheimer’s disease. The God who is so in love with humanity forbids that. But we need to pray: Come, Holy Spirit, come!