THE DIVINE MERCY
by
Fr. Courtney Krier
Sermon for 8 June, 2008, VYSKOV, CZECH REPUBLIC
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” Luke 5:8
Last November we spoke of the Sacrament of Baptism. Today it seems appropriate to reflect upon the Sacrament of Penance. Both Sacraments are the greatest gifts we received from the Passion and Death of Christ, the work of His reconciling humanity with His Eternal Father. Yes, His Presence in the Holy Eucharist is a wonderful gift of His Love for us. But we could not enjoy His Presence without knowing we shared His Love and friendship, that His Father and our Father (cf. John 20:17) loved us.
We see Peter on his knees. Perhaps a scene repeated on the night of the resurrection of Our Lord. He had denied Our Lord three times, not in the face of torture, but in the face of two or three girl servants. He had abandoned Our Lord, he, Peter the Rock, who was called to be the vicar of Christ on earth. His only attempt to provide some defense was his reckless swinging of a sword that only cut off the ear of one of the high priest’s guards. Now he was seeing Christ risen. He wasn’t alone. There were the other apostles. They, too, had run away. A friend in need is a friend indeed. But no one was there when Christ needed a friend most, only John returned. They, the Apostles, needed forgiveness. They gave up the friendship of Christ. They lost the relationship, His Love. Yet, they needed to know that there was still hope and mercy. Judas Iscariot had already committed suicide out of despair. Were they to end the same? Our Lord gives them that mercy and hope. He forgives them:
Peace be to you… When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained (John 20:21-23)
When we take these words, we might say: “Well, we all want peace.” But here “peace” means the possession of goodness, of truth, of God. As Our Lord said previously: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid (John 14:27). Christ restores them to His friendship. To make it clear, He uses that same mode of imbuing His Life as He did with Adam (cf. Gen. 2:7): He breathed upon them to express this is exactly what He was doing: Receive the Holy Life of My Love, My Spirit, the Holy Ghost which you lost.
But not only receive back this relation, My Holy Life, the Holy Ghost, restore it back to others. As I have done for you, do you also to others: And if he do penance, forgive him (Luke 17:3). So, Peter doesn’t see Our Lord depart, he receives pardon and the power to pardon. The other apostles also are pardoned and receive the power to pardon.
But if thy brother sin against thee, go and show him his fault, between and him alone. If he listen to thee, thou hast won thy brother. But if he does not listen to thee, take with thee one or two more so that on the word of two or three witnesses every word may be confirmed. And if he refuse to hear them, appeal to the Church; but if he refuses to hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 18:15-18).
There is no longer a sense of hopelessness if we fall into sin, we know that this sin can be forgiven by the power Christ bestowed upon His priests. So, as Our Lord does not depart from Peter, Peter also does not leave Our Lord, but clings to Him in gratitude for His mercy.
When we read Scripture there is contained only the rudimentary elements of what happened, but tradition and the Church’s teaching fill the scene. St. John ends his Gospel: But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written (John 21:25). And John specifically inserts this while relating the institution of Confession: Many other signs also did Jesus in the sight of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing, you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31).
The five conditions to make a worthy Confession and receive this Sacrament fruitfully are: Examine our conscience; Be sorry for our sins; Make up our mind not to sin again; Tell our sins to the priest; Be willing to do the penance the priest imposes upon us. I want to take this occasion to briefly explain each of these conditions.
Examine my conscience.
All Catholics are expected to learn the Ten Commandments before their First Communion. Why, because we must confess our sins before approaching the Sacred Banquet. Our Lord speaks of the guest who did not have on his wedding garment (sanctifying grace) and was cast out (Matt. 22:11-13). And, what do we examine our conscience against? God’s Commandments. Did I put God first? Did I take His Name in vain? Did I keep His day holy? Did I disobey my parents? Refuse to discipline my children? Harm someone or my health? And so forth. This is simple enough since the conscious “no” to Truth and Goodness takes us away from the path to God and if we seek to return we know we must go back to where we left His path.
Be sorry for my sins.
During Holy Week we reflect on the sufferings of Christ. Hopefully we did not blame the Jews or Pontius Pilate for the terrible suffering Our Lord endured, we blamed ourselves because He suffered and died for our sins. When I look at the Crucifix, I realize that is what I did and I am sorry. When a child is told by her mother to wash the dishes and the child refuses, the mother weeps from the pain this rejection causes. The child perceives what she has caused the mother and responds with the words, “I am sorry.” I am sorry I caused you this pain. If I had listened you would not be so sad. The suffering Our Lord endured should evoke the same feelings from our heart.
Make up my mind not to sin again.
If the child is sorry for causing her mother’s tears, she will begin to wash the dishes. She will be careful not to cause those tears again since she dearly loves her mother. Our Lord once told this parable: A certain man had two sons; and coming to the first, he said: Son, go work today in my vineyard. And he answering, said: I will not. But afterwards, being moved with repentance, he went. And coming to the other, he said in like manner. And he answering, said: I go, Sir; and he went not. Which of the two did the father's will? They say to him: The first. (Matt. 21:28-31) And so we now do the Father’s will not willing to cause Our Lord my grief from our sins.
Tell my sins to a priest.
Some people say that they can simply tell their sins to God. It is as if a child, after refusing to obey, simply said in their mind: I am sorry—and this is sufficient! No, we know the child must go to the mother and tell her face to face that she is sorry for not doing the dishes. She hears the words of her mother: I forgive you. She knows she must now do the dishes. How do I know God forgave me? Because I want Him to? or because He forgives me? Nowhere in Scripture do we read that we need only tell God our sin. In fact, we read that even in the Old Testament Moses told the people to tell their sins to the priest: And the priest shall pray for him and for his sin (Leviticus 5:6). It was necessary, as Our Lord told the ten lepers: Go, show yourselves to the priests (Luke 17:14; cf. Leviticus 13.) Leprosy has always symbolized sin, and it was the priest to declare if leprosy remained or was taken away. The declaration by the priest that sin is taken away is the assurance of forgiveness. Protestants may say that it was the Lateran Council that commanded Confession. No, it was only this Council that confirmed the obligation to Confess once a year. The early Christian communities never complained, being that most were comprised of Israelites who knew the obligation to confess. Despite the clear injunction to forgive and retain, Protestants simply do not believe in the Word of God. Their attack upon Catholic’s usage of auricular Confession parallels that of the Scribes, who, when Our Lord told the Paralytic, “Son, thy sins are forgiven thee,” thought within themselves: “Why does this man speak thus? He blasphemes. Who can forgive sins but God only?” (Mark 2:5,7). We must also answer them: As Christ forgave sins as the Son of Man sent by His Father, so the Apostles—and those who succeeded them—forgive sins having been sent by Christ: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given me. Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you….” (Matt. 28:18-19).
Beyond this, Scripture is sometimes not understood in the manner that it should be. Many look at Scripture on a par with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey or Aesop’s Fables and maybe a little higher than The Brothers Grimm Fairytales. They are mere stories with a moral overture. This is especially elucidated with those who want to stress the difference of authorship and content of the various books and the Old Testament with the New Testament. Scripture must be accepted as the Word of God, God’s Eternal Word revealed to us, the Second Person. In the Old Testament He is revealed in promise. In the New Testament He is revealed as the promise fulfilled, Incarnate. A comparison might be to look at it as if my father promised me, a young boy, a car, describing what that car will look like and how it works according to my understanding. Then, on my 16th birthday, he gives me the car. Now I know what the car really is and how it works. My father is the same of both the promise and the fulfillment. The car is still the same, once as a description, once as reality. So is Sacred Scripture the same. And, being the Word of God: Truth itself.
When I tell my sins to the priest, I must be specific as to the sin. It also is part of my human nature. It is what God requires, who is the Creator of my nature. God knows my nature better than I do since He designed it. He knows that I need to pronounce the sin to know what I must also amend. A mere pronouncement that I sinned or that I am “bad” does nothing to delineate what I have sinned in. The word “bad” can signify that I am bad at a sport, or in writing or math or singing. It is so encompassing that there is nothing I can focus on with the word. I must realize that when I say I took God’s Name in vain, I know exactly what is my sin and what I must now correct. I know, because it is now pronounce and my word binds me to honor the obligation to amend my transgression.
I also tell how many times or how often I committed this sin. This places in my mind how serious is my fault and the effort I must make to overcome my deviance. It also allows the priest to forgive the sin as a totality rather than a part of the sins. If they are mortal or grievous sins, a part does not suffice for receiving absolution. Therefore, I must make the effort to place all my grievous sins in kind and number before the priest.
I must be willing to do the Penance the priest imposes on me.
Sometimes we do not realize what is expressed in the penance the priest imposes on us. We commit a horrible sin and the priest tells us to say three “hail mary’s” just as he did when we were a child and disobeyed our mother. The Church looks to the salvation of souls. In the early Church, soon after the persecution ended, when She was just beginning to establish herself as a public institution with acceptable authority over the lives of her members, public sinners were given severe penances. One such common penance was that of receiving ashes at the beginning of the Lenten Season, kneeling at the entrance of the Church with sackcloth, and begging pardon of the entering faithful. This did not lead to a cessation of sin, but a cessation of public sinners confessing. Holy Mother Church stopped this practice, though she retained the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday for all Her children, saints or sinners. This is also found in confession. Everyone, saints or sinners, must confess at least once a year. This allows each to retain his or her honor—keeping the eighth commandment—by not being classified as a sinner through the reception of this Sacrament. That is, no one knows if those confessing are saints or sinners. Even the one so holy that his or her halo illumines the Church—and the lights could be turned off to save electricity—they still must go to confession; just as the one who is so sinful the Church seems to get darker when he or she walks in. But if going in to confession causes no distinction, so must coming out. If the saint receives an Ave and the sinner five Rosaries, would this not inform everyone? Also, as it is part of the Sacrament, and because the priest usually says the three “hail Mary’s” after Mass, for pastoral reasons, the Church encourages the priest to prescribe this penance, which assures that the penance will be performed. You know, we have such forgetful memories. We men cannot even remember the birthday of the wife. How will we remember to say three “hail marys”?
The three “hail marys” are simple enough. What is difficult is the amendment. When our Lord said: Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained (John 20:21-23), sometimes sins are not forgiven by the priest. If a thief comes to say he stole a thousand Euros and, to obtain pardon, he must return the stolen money, it may be difficult. If he refuses, he does not receive pardon. His sin is retained. If someone has a problem of going to a tavern and getting drunk and does not want to stop going to the tavern, the sin is not forgiven. If someone is living with another person in sin and refuses to leave the person, the sin is retained. It is sometimes harder to stop sinning than it is to say a few Rosaries. And it is the ceasing to sin that is required.
May we make use of this great Mercy of God, this Sacrament of Penance through worthy Confessions and express our gratitude by true sorrow for sin and amendment of life.
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