I just discovered a little jewel on the internet. The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, founded by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, have a page on their website called From the Friars, which is an E-letter, apparently posted each day. Subjects range from updates on the priory to spiritual subjects written in a down to earth humble manner. I have a feeling I will be drawing on their wisdom often for this blog.
In perusing the archives, I came across a very wise post on the purification of memory. How many of us need this in our lives!
Fr. Herald J. Brock writes that we all need to purify our memories because we often keep other things such as resentment and past sinful experiences alive and present in our minds to our spiritual detriment.
The image that St. Bernard of Clairvaux uses to illustrate this is one of overindulgence on junk food. What is pleasurable at first, becomes a feeling of being overstuffed and begins to inhibit our full functioning as human beings. The remedy is stop stuffing ourselves with unhealthy food and enter into a period of fasting, so that all of that uncomfortable spiritual indigestion can pass out of us.
Do you ever feel spiritually "overstuffed"? Have you overindulged in mental and emotional "junk food"? Perhaps some spiritual fasting is in order.
After you have begun to purge yourself of unhealthy outside influences, take a page from the 12 step programs and make a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of yourself. If you are Catholic, take your discoveries into the confessional and have your soul cleansed of sin.
It's not easy. Can you do it? Yes, with God's help.
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