Reconciliation With God And The Church

By DON FIER

As we examined the various forms that penance can take in the Christian life last week, we saw that its authentic expression must always be grounded on interior conversion of heart. The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this inner transformation as interior penance and defines it as “the movement of a ‘contrite heart’ (Psalm 51:17), drawn by divine grace, to respond the merciful love of God” (n. 300).
It involves not only sorrow, but abhorrence of past sins, a firm purpose of amendment, and trust in God’s help and mercy.
We also saw last week that the Church, based on Sacred Scripture and the Church fathers, identifies three basic forms of penance: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, provides a summary of some of the penitential practices that are deemed praiseworthy: regular examination of conscience, spiritual direction, suffering persecution for the true faith; carrying our daily crosses in union with our Lord; frequent reception of Holy Communion (as the most effective way to atone for sins and preserve oneself from the contagion of sin); reading Scripture, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and participating in other forms of Catholic worship; and observing the Church’s special penitential seasons and days of penance (every Friday), going on retreats and pilgrimages, and offering voluntary sacrifices (cf. The Faith, pp. 123-124).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) emphasizes that sin, first and above all, is an offense against God; if grave in nature, it ruptures communion with Him. However, this is not the only wound inflicted — at the same time “it damages communion with the Church” (CCC, n. 1440). This follows directly from the doctrine of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.
St. Paul explains in a letter to the people of Corinth: “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:12-13). We are all mystically connected to one another and “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor. 12:26a).
So it is that every sin, even the most private and secret, in some way adversely affects the Church. Likewise, each virtuous action performed by a person in the state of grace in some way builds up the Church.
In his book entitled These Are the Sacraments (TASa), Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen speaks of serious sin as producing a threefold effect.
First and foremost, it estranges one from God and thus separates the person from communion with Him. The person in serious sin is like a branch cut off from the vine (cf. John 15:5). Second, it estranges one from self — it is as if a civil war is being waged internally where two forces struggle for mastery. Finally, it estranges one from his fellowman — if a person is not at peace with himself, how can he be at peace with others?
Archbishop Sheen astutely states: “World wars are nothing but the projection, into great areas of the earth’s surface, of the psychic wars waging inside of muddled souls. If there were no battles going on inside of hearts, there would be no battlefields in the world” (TASa, p. 92).
The Catechism affirms that “only God forgives sins” (CCC, n. 1441). To understand this fundamental truth of our faith, one must appreciate the fact that sin has an infinite dimension — it is an offense against an infinite and omnipotent God. Thus, only God in His divinity can forgive sins.
Accordingly, being one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, the Son of God “has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Luke 5:24). Furthermore, “by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name” (CCC, n. 1441). It is thus that the priest, who acts in persona Christi, has been given the capacity to act as an instrument of God’s mercy to forgive sins in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.
Indeed, Christ “entrusted the exercise of the power of absolution to the apostolic ministry which he charged with the ‘ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:18)” (CCC, n. 542). As St. John Chrysostom (349-407), archbishop of Constantinople and important early Church father, stated so beautifully: “[Priests] have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels….What priests do here below God ratifies above” (De sac. 3, 5).
Sacred Scripture includes many examples of Jesus’ desire not only to grant forgiveness to repentant sinners, but to reintegrate “forgiven sinners into the community of the People of God from which sin had alienated or even excluded them” (CCC, n. 1443).
In the Parable of the Prodigal Son which we considered last week, the father not only forgave his wayward but repentant son, he also welcomed him back into his family with great joy. “The beautiful robe, the ring, and the festive banquet are symbols of that new life — pure, worthy, and joyful — of anyone who returns to God and to the bosom of his family, which is the Church” (CCC, n. 1439).
Two other parables in the 15th chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke further illustrate how great is our Lord’s desire for the return and reconciliation with the Church of those who have strayed. In the Parable of the Lost Sheep (see Luke 15:3-7), the Good Shepherd leaves behind the ninety-nine sheep who are safe to seek out and return to the fold the single lost sheep.
The parable ends with Jesus’ wonderful affirmation: “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). The Parable of the Lost Coin (see Luke 15:8-10) teaches a similar lesson. Reconciliation with God and the Church, however, requires from the sinner interior conversion of heart. Our Lord, fully respectful of man’s free will, will never force anyone to repent.
The granting by Jesus of the power to reconcile sinners to the Church is most notably expressed in His solemn words to Simon Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. 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” (Matt. 16:18-19).
Just two chapters later, the power to bind and loose is extended to the other apostles: “Truly, 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. 18:18).
The actual institution of Penance took place in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday night: After having said “Peace be with you” (John 20:21), Jesus breathed on the apostles and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22-23).
In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the Second Vatican Council fathers give further explanation to these important biblical verses:
“Our Lord placed Simon alone as the rock and the bearer of the keys of the Church, and made him shepherd of the whole flock; it is evident, however, that the power of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter, was granted also to the college of apostles, joined with their head” (Lumen Gentium, n. 22 § 2).
As the Catechism expounds, “The ‘power of the keys’ designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church….The power to ‘bind and loose’ connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church” (CCC, n. 553).

Binding And Loosing

In more precise terms, what do Sacred Scripture and the Church mean by bind and loose?
“Whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God,” teaches the Catechism, “whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his” (CCC, n. 1445).
In his Basic Catholic Catechism Course, Fr. Hardon expresses the same thing in slightly different terms: “By ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ on earth and in Heaven is meant excluding from and admitting to the Church (on earth) and God (in Heaven)” (p. 156). From both definitions we can come to know with certainty that “reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God” (CCC, n. 1445).
The Catechism next states in very clear terms that “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” (CCC, n. 1446).
Nearly a half-millennium earlier, the Council of Trent pronounced this same dogma: “Those who by sin have fallen away from the received grace of justification will again be able to be justified when, roused by God through the sacrament of penance, they by the merit of Christ shall have attended to the recovery of the grace lost” (Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1542).
The early Christian author Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155-240) aptly referred to Penance as “a second plank after the shipwreck of lost grace” (De Paenit. 4, 2).
Next week, we will look at how the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance has varied over the centuries.
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)