After this week’s talk for the Lent seminar series that I’m doing, I wanted to talk about reconciliation. The theme of it, obviously for Lent but also the sacrament of reconciliation. I wanted to give my interpretation of the sacrament as well as some common arguments that may come up when talking about confession and forgiveness of our sins.
The sacrament of reconciliation has to do with us admitting our faults that have caused us to sin and turn away from God. A common way of describing sin, which I greatly appreciate, is missing the mark. We have missed the mark in some way on our walk with God and we have turned away from Him temporarily. So in order to rectify that, we go to reconciliation to admit our sin and ask for forgiveness from God but also to make a vow to not commit the same sin, which is called repentance. However, since we are human and will continue to follow our ancestors in original sin, we will likely commit the same mistakes and the same sins but that does not mean that we are not any less worthy of God’s love and mercy. We must keep trying and striving to get in alignment with God again and when the same faults are committed we must seek out ways and situations to avoid committing those same sins. Ultimately, I think this just comes from prayer and Grace from God.
One of the most, if not the most, common arguments for why someone would go to confession with a priest is “Why confess my sins to another human being when I can just confess them to God directly?” This was somewhat answered in the talk this past week, although I’m not sure that I fully understand it. It was said with a quote from the gospels that Jesus gave the apostles the ability to forgive or retain sins and since the bishops and priests ultimately come from that lineage, that is why they have the power from God directly to forgive sins. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:23) And only God knows if you are truly sorry for your sins and if confess them directly to Him if that will actually absolve you from your sins. However this is not what the church teaches and also it is not what I believe. It makes sense to me that the priest is a representation or an advocate of God and it is the closest thing that we can get to communicating with God directly. So that is our best bet for true forgiveness of our sins. From the talk, it was added that a certain grace comes through the sacrament because the sacraments are also coming from God. So forgiveness outside of the sacrament itself is not what is taught. However, some people who are against Catholic dogma will denounce this as truth and continue to believe what they want to believe. I am merely bringing this up to attempt to justify the reason for going to reconciliation, but ultimately everyone has their own choice and makes the own decision on what they think is right and what they choose to believe.
It is also questioned on how God can forgive certain sins no matter how egregious or how God can keep forgiving the same sin. We touched on the latter a bit earlier but again, it is God’s desire to make us pure and so if we need to keep going back over and over again despite the same sin that does not make us any less worthy. That also goes for how terrible some sins can be. There worst sins imaginable are still forgivable because again God’s grace is infinite and it is not our right or responsibility to try to decipher that or understand it. We could just accept it as truth that God can and will forgive any and all sins innumerable times. Like many other topics I have discussed so far in this blog, God’s grace is ultimately what saves us from many things, especially ourselves.
To conclude, I think that reconciliation is one of the most important sacraments that we can get at almost any time. I think it is highly underrated and underutilized, myself included. There are also many things that I feel I will never get past and I’m working on accepting that. That despite no matter how many times I have been to reconciliation for the same thing, and maybe feel like I will never get through it, it doesn’t keep me from continuing to go and continuing to make attempts at trying to relieve myself of the destructive behavior. It is a continued life journey towards God. I will continue to pray for anyone reading this in our walk with the Lord and trying to get one step closer to sainthood.
Leave a Reply