My cat died last Sunday; Tommy was very, very old. He was deaf, arthritic, losing weight and struggling to make it to the cat tray.

He had a great innings, as they say, and I’ve had pets die before. What was different about this one? Well, his deafness meant he became my shadow in his later years. He followed me upstairs and downstairs; he followed me to the settee and to the loo and to the fridge. Sometimes I very nearly tripped over him, he was so quietly everywhere.

He had been a part of our family for so long and his death was devastating in a way I didn’t expect. The impact of Tommy on our life as a family meant we needed to think through what to do with his remains. I am not especially sentimental and, on previous occasions, have left the ashes of loved pets to be disposed of by the vet.

This time was different. This time we wanted his ashes back with us, not to keep on a mantelpiece, but to dispose of in a way fitting to his memory. And we’re decided, next time we’re in Dartford, we’ll scatter his remains at Spirits Rest, a beautiful animal sanctuary in my old parish. Tommy deserves to be remembered properly. And memories need ritual and form. You can’t hold on to the content of memories without giving them a shape, a metaphorical container. You will lose them eventually.

I’ve written on the theme of remembering elsewhere on this site in the context of the central act of Christian communal life – Holy Communion. In this act of worship we obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper as he shared bread and wine with his followers. That command has resonated down the ages, ‘do this as often as you eat it, in remembrance of me’.

Since the debates (and, of course, bloodshed) of the Reformation, this prayer of Consecration has meant different things to different Christians, from transubstantiation to a recollection or a re-enactment, which is sincere, and may be sacramental, but may not involve ontological mystery. I’m sure too there are all kinds of private understandings of what is happening when we receive the bread and wine. But we agree that it somehow restores us to the Body of Christ across time and space.

For me, it depends on this word ‘remembering’. Think about that last night before Jesus died: Maundy Thursday; the day before Good Friday. He knew that humiliation, and pain, and death were coming for him shortly. He could have run away, he could have hidden, he could have recanted, he could have persuaded his disciples to fight for him – they wanted to. All these options were open to him. And probably others.

What he has done for them/for us is to give them and us, very visually, the form to hold the message. A container to place it in. Jesus talks about love, of course he does. Love is who he is. It is both the message and the messenger. But he also enacts that love in two dramatic ways – through the sharing of a meal that will bind them to him, and through the washing of feet to help them understand what love looks like. Those actions were etched on their memories far deeper than words alone could ever have been.

I am not entirely sure what happens ontologically at the consecration of the bread and wine. I don’t need to. But I do know it is truly an act of remembering – ‘do this in remembrance of me’ – and remembering is far more than just a not forgetting. To be a member of something is to belong to that something – a group, a team, a school – to be a member is to be a part of. To re-member is to be a part of once again. When we sit and chat with our loved ones with dementia, when we remember them, we are not simply not forgetting – we are making them and their story part of us once more. It is a sacred thing. Remembering is so much more than merely not forgetting. To share in the bread and wine, to live in the Love of God, is what we mean when we speak of being part of the Body of Christ through time and space. We are indeed what we eat.

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. Tuesday is Remembrance Day. From the poppy (white, purple or red – it doesn’t matter; they are all meaningful) to the two minute silence, from the sound of the Last Post to the renewed commitment to Peace, remembrance is truly about remembering and making the past part of us again. . We remember in the simple sense of recalling the horror of war, and the hope we might learn to live a different way. But there is also in the ritual, if we look for it, this much deeper remembering – making the war dead part of us again, turning to them and giving them a chance to speak. And, us, a chance to listen. And maybe to learn.

I struggle with Remembrance Sunday. I always have. I feel uneasy when we reduce our war dead to a monolith, a single structure. The millions who died were all different, unique human beings. They were of different political persuasions, supported different football teams – some I’m sure hated football, hated sport. Some went to war, I guess, with a strong spirit of patriotism, others perhaps in a sense of adventure. Many I think must have been just scared and doing what they had to. Some would have been unsure of the causes they were told they were fighting for and had doubts about killing other young men just because they wore a different uniform and spoke a different language. A few brave souls refused to go to war as combatants. Yes, they died for our freedom – but they had no choice. They didn’t sacrifice themselves – our world sacrificed them. And we shall not be remembering them properly until we let them speak.

When we deny our war dead the right to speak for themselves, the right to dissent from our monolithic views of them, we have already lost the freedom of speech we claim they died for. We must remember properly – a careful, sensitive remembering will allow us to speak to the past, not just for it, and allow the past to speak honestly to us.