Purification of Memory 

There is no need for us to live with the ghosts of the past, with the memory of past sins and troubles weighing heavily upon our hearts and preventing us from moving forward. If we have been brought to Jesus Christ by the circumstances of life; if, by God's grace, we have come to Jesus Christ; if Jesus Christ Himself has sought us out, placed us upon His shoulders and carried us home, then "there is no need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before" (Is 43:18). The excessive mercy of the Lord has swallowed up all our sins, leaving no trace of what was, and filling the present with the sound of his praise. "The people I have formed for myself will sing my praises" (Is 43:21).
-Fr. Mark Daniel Kirby, Vultus Christi.com

The startling words above resonate with the certainty that nothing is impossible for God. As children of God, our faith is asked to believe that we can be freed from the sin and all negative memory of its past. The power of Jesus, the grace of God, is enough for us, requiring only our determination to believe with faith and through these, awaken to the Eternal Now.

The switching out of an old body for a new body, a false mind for a renewed mind, and the escape from the human inability to accomplish these miracles is the meaning of salvation.

Receiving Jesus in the sacraments helps us to consciously and subconsciously stop returning to the disordered past, to stop recreating the negative past.

Addicts have not been helped by a secular age that has crept toward legalization of lust for over a century now. In the name of freedom and "civil rights", culture and the law have both welcomed provocative sensuality and immodesty in advertising, TV programs, music and arts, dance, literature, fashion, and the seductive hipness of ever novel human speculation and license.

All these errors precede legalized pornography,which betrays the ultimate mistake that the poison of lust is a good. The popular consensus of modern society that lust behavior is non-compulsive, non-addicting, optional, normal and entitled, is disastrously uninformed.

God 's grace, received in the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confession, heals the compulsion to fixate upon the dead past of lust, and grants the power to resist environmental temptation in the present.

An awful past and a worrisome future, sleeplessly campaigning to eclipse the clear eternal now of freedom, is the death game of Satan. When grace slowly builds within, to shut down compulsion for the pernicious past, the only other place Satan can kick up sediment is through dreams and spontaneous memory or memory triggered by associations.

Indulging in lust for years unwittingly risks filling the mind with volumes of ugliness which later supply the enemy with fodder for future afflictions. The enemy draws upon our unclean memory to torment, to try to make us lose heart by the illusion that compulsion and sin are never going to go away.

A past that has more meaning and weight than the present is of course a total lie. Awakening from addiction is to re-establish the basis of true reality which is not seated in yesterday's wounds and sins. With our faith, Jesus' unending sacrifice and blood of infinite merit make all things new. Reception of the body and blood of the Divine Lamb cleanses our memories, purges them so that the weak-compulsive mind no longer wants to locate what it once would crave to fixate upon.

Perhaps, as importantly, the desire for a clean memory where old ugly things have progressively limited influence, is assisted by what is done with the sacramental grace of Christ.God feeds and heals us, but our health is bolstered the more through Christian living, a life seeking to do good, helping others, serving others, by letting God's grace work smoothly within us.

How can I help? Who can I help? Who do I serve? Who is in need? What is in my power to do for another? All charitable thoughts followed by immediate action help the purification of self and memory. Listen to the Word:

Isaiah 586-9:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then shall you call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry, and he will say, Here I Am.

Tobit 11:8:

Prayer and almsgiving open the treasures of the Lord, the omnipotent King, and incline Him to be lavish in mercy toward those who ask.

The sacraments, corporal works of mercy and faith in God's grace are the most powerful lust-destroying helps we have in the Christian life. Let us thank God for these mercies, these gifts, and give ourselves to them with persevering faith.

Addicts and sinners who come to accept and live the blessed redemption won by Jesus Christ, experience a conversion from ugliness to beauty. The found and the saved all begin to recognize the cosmic symphony of God, 'ever ancient and ever new'. The Church of Jesus is finally recognized as a sacred refuge of mystical splendors whose name is Beauty.

The recovered become artisans and musicians of praise in God's court.

Thank you Jesus, for all that You have done for us, all that You are doing, and all that You will do. Amen.