Remembering God’s Mercy with Dawn Eden

Remembering God’s Mercy is a perfect resource for personal spiritual growth during the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

In the first book to explore how memories impact and are affected by faith, bestselling author Dawn Eden offers a guide to the process she used to heal the pain of her past. Through her own story, as well as the examples of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Peter Faber, and Pope Francis, she shows how the mercy of God, who holds all of events of our life in his own memory, can bring you healing and inner peace.

Dawn Eden’s My Peace I Give You helped thousands find peace after abuse and established her as the leading Catholic authority on recovering from traumatic stress. In Remembering God’s Mercy, Eden—who suffered childhood sexual abuse that left her with PTSD—describes how she was inspired by the example of Pope Francis, St. Ignatius, and St. Peter Faber, all of whom suffered from their own painful experiences and followed a similar path to healing.

Pope Francis has spoken openly about how a life-threatening bout of pneumonia affected his relationship with God, saying that recognizing and accepting the power of memories to color perceptions is essential to seeing God in all things and experiencing inner peace. The pope was influenced by the examples of Ignatius and Faber. Ignatius suffered the loss of his mother at a young age and was sent by his father to live with another family. He also fought as a mercenary soldier as a young man and experienced the trauma of war and physical pain. Faber, a student of Ignatius and among the early members of the Society of Jesus, suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety for years. He wrote in his diary how he applied Ignatius’s spiritual practices in a way that enabled him to rise above his mental suffering to grow closer with God.

Through the wisdom of these three Jesuits, Eden developed an Ignatian model of healing:

• Acknowledge your memories.
• Accept that they change the way you see God, your fate, and other people.
• Allow God to transform your memories by coloring the past and present with his story of salvation.

Eden examines how Jesus’ wounds can bring healing to your own hurt through prayer, Mass, the Sacraments (particularly confession), and the life of the Church. In each chapter, she will engage you with specific steps to take using the most famous Ignatian prayer, the Suscipe—Latin for “receive”—to transform your past traumas into an offering to God that is united with Jesus’ own self-offering.

Dawn Eden is the author of Remembering God’s Mercy: Redeem the Past and Free Yourself from Painful Memories, The Thrill of the Chaste, and My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.

Born into a Jewish family in New York City, Eden lost her faith as a teenager and became an agnostic. During her twenties, in the 1990s, she worked as a rock journalist in New York City, interviewing oldies artists such as Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. She went on to work in editorial positions for the New York Post and the Daily News.

At the age of thirty-one, Eden underwent a dramatic conversion to Christianity that ultimately led her to enter the Catholic Church. Both her books have been featured in the New York Times, L’Osservatore Romano, and on numerous EWTN programs, and they have been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish.

Eden received her pontifical licentiate in sacred theology from the Dominican House of Studies in 2014 and is currently completing a doctorate at the University of St. Mary of the Lake. She has spoken about spiritual healing and conversion to thousands of people throughout North America and abroad.