Learning by Heart

I’ve been thinking lately about the wisdom of learning things “by heart.” Prayers, for example. Or the Faith itself, the catechism. It’s been said time and again - and I would have said it too until recently - that simply memorizing things is not the same as knowing them. But, I’m not sure that I agree with that anymore.

I remember struggling with multiplying numbers by 7 and by 8 when I was younger. There was no other remedy other than to memorize the multiplication problems that confused me most. But once learned, they stayed learned. It was my first experience of being unable to picture math problems. I had to learn them by heart. But I learned them all the same.

Then there was our Catholic Faith. I was a public school kid in a household where there was a lot of fighting. We weren’t exactly sitting down at night to read the Bible together. So there was no way one socially traumatizing weekly visit to the local parish was going to help me to know how Abraham had anything to do with Moses, let alone Jesus.

Nor were we asked to memorize anything. What went unlearned stayed unlearned. It wasn’t until the Seminary that I read the Old Testament and began connecting the dots. But what if I had been asked to memorize some things as a child? I’m not saying it would have made me holier. I do, however, think I would have had a better understanding of the Faith.

Is it really understanding, though? Perhaps not in the sense of developing an ability to apply the Faith. That comes only with maturity. But I would have known it by heart. And maybe if it were there, in my heart, I could have accessed it sooner. Those multiplication tables were really tough for me, but I got them by memorizing them. I bet I could have gotten Genesis and Jesus too, had I been asked to memorize parts of those stories.

I’m not blaming anyone. I absolutely could have taken it upon myself to learn the Scriptures by heart, just as I had memorized Shel Silverstein’s poems by sheer repetition. But the daunting unfamiliarity of the Bible was off-putting and unattractive to me, because I had accepted what I believed to be the impossibility of my ever knowing it well.

When Peter, James, and John saw Jesus’ face shining like the sun on Mount Tabor, they didn’t comprehend the magnitude of that encounter, but they did understand something. It spoke to their hearts. They recognized Moses and Elijah, because of the many things they’d memorized about the law and the prophets. There was much more to learn, but there was recognition of what they had already been made to memorize.

I would bet that those of you who are older and reading this have at least once thought to yourself, “the Baltimore Catechism.” Years ago I might have said it was a good thing that we’ve gotten away from memorizing the Faith. Now I’m not so sure. Once learned, the Faith stays learned. And the surest way to learn something is to learn it by heart. +