VI. The Sacrament of
Penance and Reconciliation
1440
Sin is before all else an offense against God, a rupture of communion with him.
At the same time it damages communion with the Church. For this reason
conversion entails both God's forgiveness and reconciliation with the Church,
which are expressed and accomplished liturgically by the sacrament of Penance
and Reconciliation.38
Only God
forgives sin
1441
Only God forgives sins.39 Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of
himself, "The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins" and
exercises this divine power: "Your sins are forgiven."40
Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to
exercise in his name.41
1442
Christ has willed that in her prayer and life and action his whole Church
should be the sign and instrument of the forgiveness and reconciliation that he
acquired for us at the price of his blood. But he entrusted the exercise of the
power of absolution to the apostolic ministry which he charged with the
"ministry of reconciliation."42 The apostle is sent out
"on behalf of Christ" with "God making his appeal" through
him and pleading: "Be reconciled to God."43
Reconciliation
with the Church
1443
During his public life Jesus not only forgave sins, but also made plain the
effect of this forgiveness: he reintegrated forgiven sinners into the community
of the People of God from which sin had alienated or even excluded them. A
remarkable sign of this is the fact that Jesus receives sinners at his table, a
gesture that expresses in an astonishing way both God's forgiveness and the
return to the bosom of the People of God.44
1444
In imparting to his apostles his own power to forgive sins the Lord also gives
them the authority to reconcile sinners with the Church. This ecclesial
dimension of their task is expressed most notably in Christ's solemn words to
Simon Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven."45 "The office of binding
and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of the
apostles united to its head."46
1445
The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion, will
be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your
communion, God will welcome back into his. Reconciliation with the Church is
inseparable from reconciliation with God.
The
sacrament of forgiveness
1446
Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance for all sinful members of his
Church: above all for those who, since Baptism, have fallen into grave sin, and
have thus lost their baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion. It is to them
that the sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and to
recover the grace of justification. the Fathers of the Church present this
sacrament as "the second plank [of salvation] after the shipwreck which is
the loss of grace."47
1447
Over
the centuries the concrete form in which the Church has exercised this power
received from the Lord has varied considerably. During the first centuries the
reconciliation of Christians who had committed particularly grave sins after
their Baptism (for example, idolatry, murder, or adultery) was tied to a very
rigorous discipline, according to which penitents had to do public penance for
their sins, often for years, before receiving reconciliation. To this
"order of penitents" (which concerned only certain grave sins), one
was only rarely admitted and in certain regions only once in a lifetime. During
the seventh century Irish missionaries, inspired by the Eastern monastic
tradition, took to continental Europe the "private" practice of
penance, which does not require public and prolonged completion of penitential
works before reconciliation with the Church. From that time on, the sacrament
has been performed in secret between penitent and priest. This new practice
envisioned the possibility of repetition and so opened the way to a regular
frequenting of this sacrament. It allowed the forgiveness of grave sins and
venial sins to be integrated into one sacramental celebration. In its main
lines this is the form of penance that the Church has practiced down to our
day.
1448
Beneath the changes in discipline and celebration that this sacrament has
undergone over the centuries, the same fundamental structure is to be
discerned. It comprises two equally essential elements: on the one hand, the
acts of the man who undergoes conversion through the action of the Holy Spirit:
namely, contrition, confession, and satisfaction; on the other, God's action
through the intervention of the Church. the Church, who through the bishop and
his priests forgives sins in the name of Jesus Christ and determines the manner
of satisfaction, also prays for the sinner and does penance with him. Thus the
sinner is healed and re-established in ecclesial communion.
1449
The formula of absolution used in the Latin Church expresses the essential
elements of this sacrament: the Father of mercies is the source of all
forgiveness. He effects the reconciliation of sinners through the Passover of
his Son and the gift of his Spirit, through the prayer and ministry of the
Church:
God, the Father of mercies,
through the death and the
resurrection of his Son
has reconciled the world to
himself
and sent the Holy Spirit among
us
for the forgiveness of sins;
through the ministry of the Church
may God give you pardon and
peace,
and I absolve you from your
sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.48
|