The sacrament of forgiveness. An experience of freedom

No one can forgive if he has not been forgiven before, if he has not experienced true forgiveness. Forgiving is a modality of loving, perhaps I dare say that it is one of the most perfect. To say to someone "I forgive you" is to say "I love you as you are, I recognize in you something that transcends your deeds, your limitations, your mistakes".

But forgiveness has a double aspect: in the first place, it is a gift, it does not come from ourselves, it is not the exclusive result of our will or our determination; but, in the second place, we can also learn to forgive. There are a series of internal and external attitudes that make it easier for us to accept this gift.

The collect prayer of the Mass of the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time contains a provocative affirmation: "O God, who especially manifests your power through forgiveness and mercy, pour out your grace unceasingly upon us, so that, desiring what you promise us, we may obtain the good things of heaven". 

Although this formulation may initially surprise us, we must affirm that the greatest manifestation of God's power is not only the creation or the physical miracles narrated in the Gospel and confirmed today, for example, in the processes of beatification and canonization (behind every saint we know there are two confirmed miracles), but that he manifests himself "especially" in forgiving us.

How powerfully St. Josemaría Escrivá expresses it: "A God who brings us out of nothing, who creates, is something imposing. And a God who allows himself to be sewn with iron to the wood of the cross, to redeem us, is all Love. But a God who forgives, is father and mother a hundred times, a thousand times, infinite times".

God also pronounces upon us a word of forgiveness, and the Word of God becomes flesh: "Jesus Christ is the face of the Father's mercy. The mystery of the Christian faith seems to find its synthesis in this word. It has become living, visible and has reached its culmination in Jesus of Nazareth" (Misericordiae Vultus, 1).

Thirst for love

God had it all figured out. Through the sacraments, the power of Christ's paschal mystery remains in the Church. That face of the Father's mercy is still alive and active. God forgives me today! And he teaches me to forgive. When St. Leopold Mandic - a holy Capuchin confessor - was once reproached for forgiving everyone, he pointed to a crucifix and replied: "He gave us the example!" (...) And opening his arms, he added: "And if the Lord reproached me for being too long-suffering, I could say: 'Lord, you gave me this bad example, dying on the cross for souls, moved by your divine charity. The sense of humor of the saints hides a profound truth.

The man of today-who is the man of always-frequently experiences a profound rupture, abundant failures, anguish and disorientation. Benedict XVI rightly affirmed that "in the heart of every man, a beggar of love, there is a thirst for love. In his first encyclical, "Redemptor hominis"My beloved predecessor (St.) John Paul II wrote: "Man cannot live without love. He remains for himself an incomprehensible being, his life is deprived of meaning if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate in it fully" (n. 10). 

The Christian, in a special way, cannot live without love. Moreover, if he does not encounter true love, he cannot even call himself a Christian, because, as he emphasized in the encyclical "Deus Caritas Est", "one does not begin to be a Christian by an ethical decision or a great idea, but by an encounter with an event, with a Person, which gives a new horizon to life and, with it, a decisive orientation" (n.1.). (Homily during a penitential liturgy. March 29, 2007).

Recognizing ourselves as sinners

Every sacrament is a real encounter with the Living Jesus. When I go to confession, the protagonist is not my sin, nor my repentance, nor my interior dispositions - all of which are necessary - but the merciful love of God. Pope Francis recently explained it in a Roman parish, saying that confession "is not a devotional practice, but the foundation of Christian existence. It is not a matter of knowing how to express our sins well, but of recognizing ourselves as sinners and throwing ourselves into the arms of Jesus crucified to be freed" (Pope Francis, Homily at the celebration of Reconciliation, 24 hours for the Lord, March 8, 2024). 

The Pope points out something that is important: forgiveness is an experience of freedom, while sin, guilt is an experience of slavery, as is repeatedly pointed out in Sacred Scripture. And with that experience of freedom comes peace, inner joy and happiness.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1423-1424) teaches us that this sacrament can be called by various names: "of conversion," "of penance," "of confession," "of forgiveness" and "of reconciliation. None of these terms exhausts all its richness, but shows it to us as a polyhedral diamond that can be contemplated in its different faces.

Sacrament of conversion

This is the initial point: to recognize that we all need to convert, which is the same as saying that we are all imperfect. But conversion must not spring from the contemplation of my wounded self because I am not perfect, but from the astonishing contemplation of a Love that envelops me and to which I want to correspond. "Love is not loved!" cried the young Francis through the narrow streets of his native Assisi. The starting point of conversion must be the awareness of my sin, as in medicine the starting point of treatment is the diagnosis.

It is precisely in that imperfection where God is waiting for us, who always gives us a second chance. It is always time to begin again, as is clear from the words of the Venerable Servant of God Tomás Morales, SJ: "Never get tired, to be always beginning". These words remind us of the insistent repetition of Pope Francis, since the first days of his pontificate: "God never tires of forgiving, let us never tire of asking for forgiveness".

Sacrament of Penance

The conversion mentioned above is not a matter of an instant, but implies a process, a road to travel. Even in cases where the beginning was a direct and "tumbative action of God" (let us think about St. PaulIt is clear that the great converts of the twentieth century (St. Augustine, St. John of God, St. Camillus de Lelis and the great converts of the twentieth century) had to continue their daily journey of living in the face of God. He counts on time, he is patient and knows how to wait, he accompanies us. As such a process, conversion is something living, non-linear, with ups and downs.

For many Christians, the experience of conversion can be frustrating because of the lack of time. In a culture of the immediate it is easy to succumb to impatience or despair and want everything for now. Think of Israel's forty years in the desert... God is in no hurry.

Sacrament of Confession 

Verbalizing our sins. To pass from the idea to the word. St. John Paul II, in his Apostolic Exhortation on this sacrament, affirms that "to recognize one's own sin, indeed - and going even more deeply into the consideration of one's own personality - to recognize oneself as a sinner, capable of sin and inclined to sin, is the indispensable principle for returning to God (...). In reality, to be reconciled with God presupposes and includes to get rid with lucidity and determination of the sin in which one has fallen. It presupposes and includes, therefore, doing penance in the fullest sense of the term: repenting, showing repentance, taking the concrete attitude of repentance, which is that of one who sets out on the path of return to the Father. This is a general law that everyone must follow in the particular situation in which he finds himself. Indeed, sin and conversion cannot be treated only in abstract terms". (Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 13).

The examination of conscience made from the basis of love - and not from a legalistic conception of sin - helps us to identify, to concretize. Not to remain only in "what I have done" or "what I have not done" but to go to the root. To kill a tree, it is not enough to cut the branches, but we must destroy the root.

Forgiveness and reconciliation

It is impressive to hear (in the case of the priest, to pronounce) those words that, if we can, we receive on our knees: "I absolve you of your sins...". At that moment the rope that held us is cut; God approaches us and embraces us. 

This is how Pope Francis explained it a few years ago: "Celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation means being wrapped in a warm embrace: it is the embrace of the Father's infinite mercy. Let us remember the beautiful, beautiful parable of the son who left home with the inheritance money; he spent all the money, and then, when he no longer had anything, he decided to return home, not as a son, but as a servant. He had so much guilt and so much shame in his heart. The surprise was that when he began to speak, to ask for forgiveness, the father did not let him speak, he hugged him, kissed him and made a party. But I tell you: every time we go to confession, God embraces us, God celebrates". (General Audience, February 19, 2014).

Link between Penance and Eucharist

And who does not want to be embraced? Who does not want to be grafted back into a relationship of love? God always waits for us with open arms and an open heart. That is why some authors have also called this sacrament "the sacrament of joy". This is a virtue that appears in all the characters in Luke's parables, except for the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son; something that should give us pause for thought.

This journey reaffirms the need to place the sacrament of penance back at the center of the Church's ordinary pastoral care. Let us not forget the intrinsic link between the sacrament of penance and the sacrament of the Eucharist, the heart of the Church's life, which, although it is not the subject of this article, must be mentioned.

New evangelization and holiness

Hence Pope Benedict XVI asked himself: "In what sense is sacramental Confession a 'way' for the new evangelization? First of all, because the new evangelization draws vital lymph from the holiness of the Church's children, from the daily journey of personal and communal conversion in order to be ever more deeply conformed to Christ. And there is a close link between holiness and the sacrament of Reconciliation, witnessed to by all the saints of history. Real conversion of heart, which means opening oneself to the transforming and renewing action of God, is the "motor" of every reform and translates into a true evangelizing force.

The same Pope went on to point out: "In Confession, the repentant sinner, by the gratuitous action of divine mercy, is justified, forgiven and sanctified; he abandons the old man in order to put on the new man. Only those who have allowed themselves to be profoundly renewed by divine grace can bear within themselves, and therefore proclaim, the newness of the Gospel. (St.) John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, affirmed: "I would also like to ask for renewed pastoral courage so that the daily pedagogy of the Christian community may be able to propose in a convincing and effective way the practice of the Sacrament of Reconciliation" (n. 37).

"I wish to emphasize this appeal," he added, "knowing that the new evangelization must make known to the people of our time the face of Christ as the 'mysterium pietatis,' in which God shows us his merciful heart and fully reconciles us to himself. This is the face of Christ, which they must also discover through the Sacrament of Penance" (Benedict XVI. Address to the participants in the course of the Apostolic Penitentiary on the internal law, March 9, 2012).

I believe that, even in a cursory way, it has been possible to demonstrate that the sacrament of penance also has a pedagogical value. It is part of a journey of holiness, the ultimate goal of the life of each one of us.

This is why we must share our experience with others. "May the word of forgiveness reach everyone and the call to experience mercy leave no one indifferent" (Misericordiae Vultus, 19). From the forgiveness we have received, we too become instruments of forgiveness.