Are you a prisoner of the past?

The truth is that we cannot remain prisoners of the past; people need a sort of “healing of memories” so that past evils will not come back again.

This does not mean forgetting past events; it means reexamining them with a new attitude and learning precisely from the experience of suffering that only love can build upwards, whereas hatred only produces devastation and ruin.

Throughout His life, Jesus proclaimed God’s forgiveness, but he also taught the need for mutual forgiveness as the condition for obtaining it.  In the Lord’s Prayer, He makes us pray:

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

With that “as,” He places in our hands the measure with which we shall all be judged by God.

A Healing of Memories – Saint John Paul II

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