Reconciliation
Sin exists in our world. We are all, in fact, sinners.
The Good News
announced by Jesus Christ is that God does not hold our sins against us, but
reaches out to us with healing love. Through his saving death and
resurrection we are reconciled to the Father, welcomed into the family of
God as daughters and sons, and invited to an eternal sharing in the divine
life of the Trinity.
Our human response
to this immeasurable gift is to give ourselves back to the one who gave
himself for us, offering our lives in praise and thanks to God and in
service of others.
The Church
celebrates this reconciliation in several ways. Baptism celebrates our
acceptance of the divine gift and our willingness to die to sin and accept
the life of grace. While this is a one-time event in the life of a
Christian, it is renewed continuously through our Sunday participation in
the Eucharist. We sign ourselves with the baptismal water as we enter the
church and we offer ourselves on the altar, joining our sacrifice with the
perfect self-offering of Christ on the cross. This takes away venial
(lesser) sins.
Thus, we can say
that both baptism and eucharist take away sin. There are two other
sacraments which also take away sin: anointing of the sick and
reconciliation (also known as penance or confession). Through the anointing
of the sick, a person who is in a weakened condition is given strength to
combat evil either to overcome sickness or to prepare for one's journey to
the kingdom of God. Reconciliation is the sacrament we usually think of when
we talk about forgiveness of sin. After looking deeply into ourselves and
honestly facing our sinfulness, we say out loud to another human being those
things for which we seek reconciliation.
Can we not be
reconciled to God without this other person? Do we need the mediation of a
priest to have our sins forgiven? No, of course not. God always forgives us
immediately upon our contrition. So why the sacrament?
Sacraments are
celebrations in visible form of realities that are mostly invisible.
According to the divine plan, spiritual reality seeks outward expression.
God became incarnate. Christ sent his Spirit so that his followers could be
gathered into a visible community, the church. As a sign of his continued
presence among us, he gave us the eucharist. He takes on flesh for us in
each celebration of the sacrament. Likewise, he gave his church the power to
forgive sins so that reconciliation would be more than an abstract idea; it
would be actualized in the concrete. In the sacrament, our desire to
reconcile takes on a visible form that actually effects grace; that is to
say, God's healing love is experienced more powerfully than if we only
confessed within our heart.
Sin is an offense
against God, but it is also an offense against the human community. All our
sins affect other people. They are either an open transgression against
another or the failure to do what we should have done for others. There is
no such thing as a "private" sin which does not affect others. Therefore,
the sacrament of reconciliation is there to heal not only the broken
relationship with God but also the broken relationship with our fellow human
beings. In the sacrament, the priest represents Christ but he also
represents the church, the human community. Through him, we reconcile with
both Christ, the head, and with his body, the church.
-- Essay by Fr. Frank
Coady
