Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....

As part of morning prayers we say:
O Birth-giver of God, my most holy Lady! Unworthy as I am, I beg you, by your holy and powerful prayers, cleanse my clouded mind and bruised heart. Free me from the memories of sins long gone by. Rescue me from every inclination to do wrong. In your goodness help me, for I am poor and lost.

Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....
how do you put an evil memory away?
What is it made of anyway?
Is it "just" a picture in your head, that you can simply erase or discard?
Or does it live on inside your body, printed on your cells?
Some horrible, non-recyclable, exercise in frozen plasticity.....

Sometimes we don't want to be free, perhaps the sin was sweet and we wish to hold on.
Perhaps the wound is deep and we have learned to live our lives around it, no longer using that part of our heart for much of anything.

How does She free us?
She educates our heart till it can no longer desire the sin or even the echo of its sweetness. She heals the wound, perhaps by breaking the skin and cleansing it first.

This generates some paradoxical thoughts. When we indulge a sinful memory we think we need to be chastened and rebuked, yet perhaps we need to be educated gently instead.
When we have an old hurt, we might wish to receive comfort for our pain but we might need instead to have the wound reopened or the bone broken and reset in order to be healed.
Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....Whatever it takes.

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