A short excerpt from my book, "True Mercy Has Teeth"

In my chapter inviting the reader to examine memories, and ultimately seeking the Lord's healing, I reflect on Lamentations 3 (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/lamentations/3). It is a passage that is suggested for Masses of Christian Burial, because it invites the listener to trust in the Lord. But I think its beauty and power is larger.

The writer of Lamentations was no stranger to suffering. In chapter 3, his grief is so intense that he describes himself as filled with bitterness, cast into the dust, and unable to recall happiness. But then something changes. He pauses. He chooses to remember rightly: that the Lord’s mercies are not exhausted but are new every morning. 

That shift - from despair to hope - comes not from his circumstances changing, but from his memory being redirected to truth.

 

This is what the word in the New Testament for repentance, metanoia, really means. When we hear repentance in the Gospels, too often we think it is nothing more than turning away from sin. It is that, but so much more. It means to have a change of mind, not in the sense of a simple decision, but to see the world in a new way, to see it as God sees it. It means to put off the darkened intellect, to combat the concupiscences that tempt us, and to see the world as it truly is. It is to move from bad to good, and from good to God.

 

This “change of mind” is key to everything that follows in this book. Without a desire to be changed, there is no healing. And that healing begins with our memory, as the writer of Lamentations understood.