The Miracle of Forgiveness and the Power of Confession
Summary
- The Reason for the Miracle
- The Greater Miracle: Forgiveness of Sins
- The Miracles We Overlook
- The Miracle of Vocation
- Confession in the Early Church
- The Church's Evolution on Confession
- The Modern Danger: Over-Facilitating Confession
- The Confessional as a Tribunal
- Human Weakness and the Need for Mercy
- Humiliation in Confession
The Reason for the Miracle
The reason for the miracle that our Lord performed during this time was because of the lack of faith that the Pharisees had. They could not believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and because they could not believe that, they could not believe that he could have the power to forgive sin. But to demonstrate their lack of faith to them, he pointed out that... He demonstrated to them a miracle. But in doing so, he also pointed out their lack of faith in a clear, uncontrovertible way. Because he asked them, which is greater? to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, or to say, Take up thy bed and walk. The greater miracle is the forgiveness of sins. But the Pharisees, in their blindness and their overly materialistic faith, couldn't believe that Christ had that power, and so he had to demonstrate to them the weaker miracle.
The Greater Miracle: Forgiveness of Sins
Because they could not believe the higher miracle because it was not one that they could see and perceive. They could not believe this was Christ, and so they could not believe he had that power. Period. This is something we must be careful that we don't fall into as well. It's easy for us to look for signs and wonders and miracles. It's easy for us to get caught up in looking for God to manifest himself and everything around us.
The Miracles We Overlook
It's easy for us to get caught up in searching for the ideal and the perfect. But the fact of the matter is, God demonstrates himself to us every day in every slight little thing. There are miracles abounding all around us. We just don't have the faith to see. We receive miracles every day. And we don't appreciate them for what they are.
The Miracle of Vocation
The mere fact that we have faith is a miracle, especially in an age of infidelity. The fact that we know right from wrong in a moment in a day of era of immorality is a miracle. The fact that we have found the traditional mass in the moment of the new mass and the normalization of the modernism is a miracle. The fact that we can receive our Blessed Lord in a moment when the Blessed Sacrament is so horribly attacked and denigrated is a miracle. The fact that we have vocations despite the fact that they have watered down the nature of young men to this degree is a miracle. Even Archbishop Lefebvre, as far back as the 70s, said that each vocation is a miracle of grace. Fifty years later, how much more so is that true?
Confession in the Early Church
But the miracle I want to focus on is the miracle our Lord performed here. Be of good heart, son. Thy sins are forgiven. How often? Do we go to confession? On the one hand, I bet it's not often enough. But on the other hand, all things considered, it's probably too often. In the first century of the church, confession was considered your last pan. You were able to receive it once in your lifetime. You were baptized, you were absolved of your sins at that moment, and then, because you were probably going to commit another sin sometime in your life, you were allowed to go to confession once to repair for that sin.
The Church's Evolution on Confession
The idea was you should be so taken by the faith, so taken by the love of God, so taken by the fact that Christ has chosen you, that you would never fall again into grave sin. That was the mentality they had. And if we look at the ancient church, that was how very many people lived their lives. Not obviously universally, but many. But you had that one chance. That was what they considered it at the time, which is why many people held off on receiving baptism or confession, going to confession until the very end of their lives. This was because the whole concept of confession was so alien to everybody.
The Modern Danger: Over-Facilitating Confession
We are in danger of making the confessional too common. When we approach the confessional, it's too easy for us to perceive it as a get-out-of-jail-free card, or as there's something we have to do from time to time, or a therapy session, or any number of other things that it's not. The confessional is a tribunal. It is a courtroom. Christ is on the cross as our judge because he is our creator. He is the one who gaveth life. He is our redeemer.
The Confessional as a Tribunal
In a courtroom, we throw ourselves upon the mercy of the court. We confess our sins. We confess how many times we committed our sin. And we beg the judge to forgive us and grant us clemency on the condition that we abhor our sins and are going to try to not fall back into them again. That is the question we must maintain. Are we going to fall back into sin? Of course, the answer to the question is probably. We're probably going to fall back into sin. But that's just knowledge of human nature.
Human Weakness and the Need for Mercy
We're very inconstant creatures. We tend to not keep our promises very well. We tend to fail ourselves a lot, and so therefore we tend to fail God a lot. We're inclined toward evil by the wound of original sin. We're ignorant by the wound of original sin. We're weak-willed by the wound of original sin, which has been exacerbated by the fact that we have cultivated bad habits throughout our lives. Makes it all the harder for us to reform ourselves. And yet Christ still stays on the cross, waiting for us to come to his courtroom and ask for mercy. Another chance, which we'll probably fail in. But he still waits and asks us for yet another chance.
Humiliation in Confession
The confessional in itself is supposed to be humiliating. When we go, we are supposed to be humbled by the fact that here I am again. I am confessing the exact same sins that I did two weeks ago, and two weeks before that, and two weeks before that. For the last 25 years. I'm confessing the exact same sins. We should be humiliated by that fact.