The Sacrament of Penance
This web page has two articles:
Article One: The need for Reconciliation and Forgiveness
Article Two: Called to Love, A reflection on the Sacrament of Penance
(For times of confessions and communal penance services see our home page.)
The Need for Reconciliation and Forgiveness
Relationships have moments of tension.
Our failures in love for each other are failures in love of God and our failures in love of God are failures in love for each other. Every failure in love affect many persons. Shoplifting hurts all those who shop at the store as store costs go up, as police and courts are involved, and taxes increase to cover the costs.
When we fail in love, we hurt others, we sin; we need to be reconciled. The asking and offering of forgiveness, the accepting and granting of forgiveness need to be celebrated, made clear. The more serious the offence/hurt, the more concrete/specific needs to be the celebration.
Reconciliation between those who had words might be celebrated just by beginning again to talk together, by a hug, a kiss, an apology, an apology through another, striving to undo the harm, talking the situation over?
Unfaithfulness in marriage, a son or daughter stealing a car, requires some serious conversation and very concrete asking/offering and accepting/ granting of forgiveness.
Serious hurts in society or when a great number of people are affected as by murder, theft, embezzlement, adultery, ruining others’ reputation…, need to involve the whole community usually through the courts.
As members of a faith community that preaches a way of love – loving others as God/Jesus loves us – every time we fail in love we hurt each other, we affect the reputation of all Catholic Christians, and we need to ask forgiveness and be reconciled.
In minor failures we can be reconciled by just striving to change our ways. More serious hurts e.g. murder, adultery, grave injustice, consistent failure to participate in Sunday Mass, disregarding church marriage laws, which failures against the faith community are certainly serious need to be handled by public apology and the asking for pardon. Since it is not possible to talk to all Catholics and it might not be prudent to do so we go to a representative of Jesus and the faith community in the Sacrament of Penance.How do we/you celebrate reconciliation/forgiveness?
in your home, with your friends, at work, within the community?
By a hug, a kiss, an apology through another, striving to undo the harm, talking the situation over?
How does the seriousness of the hurt affect how you deal with and celebrate forgiveness and reconciliation in your home, with others?
How do we celebrate forgiveness and reconciliation for serious hurts in society or when a great number of people are affected – by murder, theft, embezzlement, adultery, ruining others’ reputation…?
with God and in the faith community of the Church?
As members of a group that preaches a way of love – loving others as God/Jesus loves us – every time we fail in love we hurt each other; we affect the reputation of all Catholic Christians; we need to ask forgiveness.
In minor failures we can be reconciled by just striving to change our ways. More serious hurts need to be handled by public apology and the asking for pardon. Since it is not possible to talk to all Catholics and it might not be prudent to do so we go to a representative of Jesus and the faith community in the Sacrament of Penance.
Called to Love
A Reflection on the Sacrament of Penance
Called to be Lovers
From the first moment of our existence, God calls all of us to be loving persons. He asks us too grow each day in love, developing healthy and loving relationships with self, God, and others. But human history and self-inspection makes evident that there are all sorts of obstacles to that growth in love. We are powerful influence by the competitiveness and the materialism around about us. We find tendencies within ourselves towards self-centeredness rather than concern for others which is the basis of love.
We Come to God Only Through Human Love
Love involves people and we can come to a love of God only within and through human love. Because of this, God Himself in the person of Jesus the Christ came to live among us. It is through Jesus’ human love that we are empowered to love in his Spirit and can be freed from all that keeps us from becoming truly loving persons.
So often when Jesus was teaching what “to love” meant those who heard him recognized their blindness, crippleness, deafness and their paralysis in being loving person. They realized they were missing the mark and came to him for healing, forgiveness, and change of heart. He asked them to clarify the healing they needed. “Jesus said to him…, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ ‘Master, I want to see.’ (Mark10: 51)” Jesus did not send them away to ask God in private to forgive them. No, he healed them; he forgave them; he changed their hearts through human interaction, through human words and actions, and though a human relationship.
People come to wholeness as loving persons by coming into human contact with the humanity of Jesus.
Today we come into human contact with the now-risen Jesus through our human contact with his followers. We come into contact with the vine through the branches, the head through the eyes, lips, hands and feet of the body. We enter and begin this human relationship with Jesus through our Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, which celebrate and make real our entrance into the faith community, the family of God.
Jesus sent his apostles and disciples to continue his work of teaching and healing and enabling all of his followers to grow as loving persons. Jesus realized we would experience God’s forgiveness and healing only through our actual forgiving and being forgiven, through our actually healing and being healed, of and by each other.
Dying and Rising with Jesus
Jesus asks his followers to enter into his passion, death and resurrection with him. He asks us to die and rise with him. In a very powerful and beautiful way we do this in the Sacrament of Penance. We die to sin and rise to love not by our own power, but by the power of Christ and his Spirit. We go to Jesus for healing and forgiveness of all and whatever is hindering love in us. We go to Jesus present in the faith community (his body), through the ordained priest.
Early Celebrations of Forgiveness and Healing
Over the years the followers of Jesus, his church, carried on his work of bringing people to wholeness in various ways. These ways changed as the Church grew in understanding and appreciation of the healing and forgiving work of Jesus.
In the early centuries, the church prayed over those who wished to join them in faith (the catechumens), and asked God to free them from what was holding them back from totally following Jesus. Those who after Baptism publicly and seriously failed to live up to what it meant to follow Jesus and had a change of heart entered an “Order of Penitents”. These members were required to do public penance, sometimes for years. Because of its severity, this “Order of Penitents” fell into disuse.
Later Irish monks introduced a form of celebrating Jesus’ forgiveness and healing which, though now modified, forms the basis of our present-day celebration of Jesus’ forgiveness and healing.
Our Present Sacrament of Penance
Today our celebration of bringing our sinfulness to Jesus within the faith community for forgiveness and healing has three possibilities. The first form, while always appropriate and encouraged, is especially meaningful when a more extended time is desired for reflection and counseling. This rite involves only the penitent and the priest who acts in the name of Jesus and the Church. This rite, while recognizing one’s personal sinfulness, can mask the community aspect of sinfulness. Failure to be loving persons is not just something between two persons or a person and God. Failure to be a loving person reaches out and affects many, many persons. In a special way, the followers of Jesus in failing to be as loving as they can be fail the other followers of Jesus, affecting the very reputation and effectiveness of the followers of Jesus as a group. For Jesus said we would be known as his followers by our love for one another, especially our love for our companion followers of Jesus. And so any real healing and forgiveness is going to have to involve the whole community.
The second form of the Sacrament of Penance, while allowing for “individual confession” and “absolution”, brings the community together to celebrate the Sacrament. We gather together for reflection upon the scriptures; we examine ourselves silently side by side and express together our common need for forgiveness and healing. This rite beautifully reminds us that we are all sinners who fail each other and need each other’s help and forgiveness and have come together as a family to ask for Jesus’ healing and forgiveness.
The third form is a “reserved” form. When the number of the gathered faithful and availability of priests makes it impractical and imprudent to hear “individual confessions”, a group/general absolution” may be given after those gathered have reflected on the scriptures, examined themselves, and expressed their need for forgiveness and healing. Those attending are later to confess individually all serious sins in either the first or second form.
Basically, all three forms involve these steps. We listen to God’s call to become ever more loving persons especially by reflecting upon His Sacred Scripture. We seek to discover how we are hurting others and where we need to change. We ask for forgiveness and healing in those areas by being open to the priest, admitting what we have done wrong. The priest then offers the forgiving and healing ministry of Jesus and his Church. Finally we show a sign of change and desire to undo the harm we’ve caused.
What to Bring to the Lord in This Sacrament
What should we bring to the Lord for his healing, change of heart, and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance?
Very simple stated, we bring our broken and strained relationships to the Lord for healing. We bring our “whatever” is preventing us from growing as loving persons. That certainly included our conscious and willful actions and attitudes which deteriorate, destroy or prevent healthy and loving relationships: our lying, stealing, abuse of people; our non-forgiveness, hate; abortion, fighting, abuse of one’s own or other’s sexuality.
But most of us really do not want to hurt people. Yet, we still fail in love. And so often, our external actions are just symptomatic of underlying problems – a fear of being hurt again, a self-centeredness, an inability to forgive and forget, an underlying impatience, perfectionism or materialism, an unconscious prejudice of jealousy.
We are to bring all of our failures as well as their underlying causes to Jesus for forgiveness and healing. And so our “confession” will not be so much how many times we took the Lord’s name in vain but our impatience, our self-centeredness or perfectionism that under lies our external action.
Jesus Is Our Model
In taking a look at ourselves to see what should bring to the Lord for forgiveness and healing, we might begin by asking ourselves: How am I not like Jesus? What actions, what attitudes, values, motives and so on point me our as different from Jesus?
How Often Should We Celebrate the Sacrament of Penance?
Technically, we must celebrate this Sacrament only if we have committed what is termed a “mortal sin”. We sin mortally when we consciously and willingly break or seriously damage a relationship with ourselves, God, others, or the faith community. We do this by an intended, serious, hurtful act or attitude; by serious neglect; or by taking a chance of seriously harming someone. Some examples are: hating, taking the chance of committing a homicide because of drunk driving, disregarding a serious law of the faith community or civil government, involvement in more than petty theft, disregarding the sacredness of sex or marriage.
But as Catholic Christian – is that all we are concerned about – restoring broken relationships? Jesus calls us to more than that. Jesus calls us to love as he loves us.
And so if we wish to truly follow Jesus, we will want to grow in love. We will be concerned about rooting out all and everything that is preventing us from being great lovers. And so our question – how often should we celebrate the Sacrament of Penance – takes on new meaning.
The more sensitive and conscious we are of our failures in love and the need to root out “the whatever” that is slowing or preventing our growth in love, the more we will want to come to Jesus in the Sacrament of Penance for healing, empowerment, change of heart, and forgiveness.
At time in our lives, the more frequent celebration of Penance might be important – even monthly as we struggle with a particular sin or sinfulness. At other times, seasonal participation can be meaningful for us – during, Advent, Lent, and on one or two other occasions in the year or even more frequently. But certainly at least once a year seems important.
We Come to Him for Healing
The Sacrament of Penance, then, is a powerful and beautiful response to God’s call to grow in love.
True, the healing and forgiving Jesus offers us is not only through the Sacrament of Penance. He heals and forgives through prayer, good works, and, in fact, through all human love and forgiveness. He heals in a special way in Eucharist. However Eucharist celebrates more growth more than healing and change of heart.
But the fact that Jesus heals and forgives in other ways is not to make the celebration of a Sacrament of Penance any less meaningful and important. The Sacrament is so richly celebrate our coming to the Lord through his human body to be forgiven and healed thorough human interaction that we may grow as lovers.
The Sacrament of Penance – A Great Act of Worship
More importantly than any asking of forgiveness and healing is worship and praise of God in the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance. Our very act of asking forgiveness is worship and praise. It is great act adoration. It is a confession that we are not God and need to submit to His ways and not ours. It is a confession that God is a forgiving, healing God. It is a great expression of thanksgiving as we accept the gift of healing and forgiveness in the way God wishes to give it, that is, through human interaction with the Body of Christ. It is a confession of our need for God’s help and the help of the community.
Viewing the Sacrament of Penance as worship will lead us away of worrying about ourselves. For so often we worry about ourselves. I am sorry; I ask pardon; forgive me; I resolve… Seeing the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance as worship can help us root out and face that part of us that contains the root of all separation, sin and sinfulness – our self-centeredness.
Called to be evangelizers we need to present Jesus to the world and revealing God as the Forgiving, Healing God. What more powerful way is than by our public actions in the Sacrament of Penance proclaim to the whole world that God is the Forgiving and Healing God. While we do not confess our sin publicly, our going to confession is public.