Corporeal Memory: The Concrete Things of History as Living Reminders

Our next monthly meeting will be held on Friday, April 8th, from 3:00pm to 4:30pm. We will be discussing “Corporeal Memory: The Concrete Things of History as Living Reminders” by Josef Pieper from Faith and Culture (Volume 48.2).

We will be meeting in the basement hall at St. Michael’s Church, the corner of University Avenue and Hemlock Street, Waterloo (across from Laurier). Enter the door at the north end of the University Avenue parking lot.

The following is taken from the Introduction to the issue:
Josef Pieper reflects on the meaning of the commemoration of persons and events in “Corporeal Memory: The Concrete Things of History as Living Reminders.” In keeping with the occasion of his address, the thousandth anniversary of Mainz Cathedral’s founding, Pieper dwells above all on the recollective character of a cathedral. He argues that such a building’s preservation of and connection to an earlier age accords with our essential character as embodied and our attendant need to receive ultimate reality through material signs. Moreover, he holds that a cathedral achieves such signification precisely by serving no purpose outside of the bodily deed of liturgical thanksgiving that it houses and embellishes. “There exists an existential richness that we can possess only as a gift, a richness that is naturally able to survive only in superabundance, only in the gratuitous transcendence of all pragmatic and economic concerns.”

It will be hybrid meeting. If you are joining us in person, please note that masks are required when not distancing.

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