The call to holiness is a call for each of us to undertake a personal interior revolution – that is a radical change of our attitudes and ways of thinking which dictate how we behavior. In order to accomplish this interior revolution, we must first attempt to heal all of our past memories which unconsciously influence our attitudes and the ways that we think. In accomplishing this revolution memory by memory, Jesus gives us a kind of growth that is slow and therefore one to which we can adjust with relative ease. He also gives us reason to trust His love, for trust is something that also grows slowly. Further, He establishes us as builders of His Kingdom; for His goal is not merely the healing of a memory and the freedom from pain and limitation that results from such a healing – even though our happiness and freedom are important to Him; rather, His goal is the healing of our entire lives and saving us, bringing us out of the dark realms of and making of us a creative force that has the power and authority to build the Kingdom of God on earth.
Finally, as we pray to see Christ in the events of our lives, we need to remember this, namely that when we pray any kind of prayer for healing of memories, we are not “bringing Christ into the situation”; rather, we are asking Him to reveal the ways in which He already has been present in the situation, and we are further asking Him to give us the strength to choose to accept His presence there as more important than the pain we felt. To view healing of memories in any other way is to make magic of it, that is, telling God to go here and there within our memories and do what we want Him to do in them, creating for us a past that, in a certain sense, could merely be a product of our own minds.
Hopefully this makes some sense to you, my readers. It is the way that we approach God for the healing of our past memories that is important. We ask Him to help us see these memories in a different way. We don’t ask Him to take away the memories but to help us see how they can help us.