Reading James 4:4-10.

A rather depressing reading to start! But human sin is what makes us "unclean". It is the thing we have to be purified from.

As Christians, even if we are mere pew warmers and not searching to make our relationship with God strong, we still are called upon at each and every service in the Anglican Church to confess our sins and to cleanse ourselves from all unrighteousness. But having done that are we closer to God? Yes. But sometimes we are not aware of it because of the clinginess of sins and memories of sins. A man came and asked the priest if he would hear his confession as he had a real burden on his heart. After he had told the priest his story and made his confession, the priest pronounced the absolution and sent him on his way. A week later the man came back again and said to the priest, "Do you remember the sin that confessed about last week?" The priest replied, "No I don't and neither does God! You received God's absolution so why are still carrying that sin in your heart?" But this is what we do.

In The Ascent to Mount Carmel by John of the Cross, he states that in some instances memories are as great a hindrance to the soul as the desire for external things.

So he urged a thorough cleansing of all disturbing and harmful recollections. Evelyn Underhill, the well-known Retreat leader and spiritual guide of the 1920s agrees: "The psychic storehouse," she says, "with its accumulation of remembered experiences-pains and pleasures, repulsions and attractions, images and notions- colours all our reactions to reality and enchains us to our past. Still more disastrous is the constant presence of the psychic rubbish-heap with its smouldering resentments, griefs and cravings,... the tight, hard balls of prejudice, the devitalising regrets. All this ceaselessly tempts us to sterile self-occupation, destructive of that simplicity which is the condition of a self abandoned love. It reminds us of past sense-related and emotional experiences...old wounds to our self love, old conflicts born of pride, anger, or self will, and throws up distracting images whenever our minds are quiet.
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