As I research my second book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I am discovering some beautiful writings of the Holy Father, including this from "Memory Awakens Hope," an essay written while he was Cardinal Ratzinger:
"[It] is only the person who has memories who can hope. . . . Recently a counselor who spends much of his time talking with people on the verge of despair was speaking in similar terms about his own work: if his client succeeds in recalling a memory of some good experience, he may once again be able to believe in goodness and thus relearn hope; then there is a way out of despair. Memory and hope are inseparable. To poison the past does not give hope: it destroys its emotional foundations."
Many thanks to those who have been praying for me as I write my book. Please keep those prayers coming; I need them! For more on My Peace I Give You, see my interview with Catholic News Agency and my blog entry announcing the book.
