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Ways of Forgiveness How to let forgiveness set you free
by John Edwards SJ
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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Contents God’s forgiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Forgiveness granted: the Sacrament of Penance . . . . . .9 Forgiveness of others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Practicalities of the Sacrament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Penance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
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God’s forgiveness When we seek forgiveness we come to God for judgement. And God does judge us, and he pronounces his verdict. This word will stand for all eternity, and he will never judge the past again. And his verdict is ‘not guilty’. What forgiveness means Acquittal by God affects something. Forgiveness means that God, who sees things as they really are, looking at a man’s life and seeing in each day, repeatedly, year after year, the moments of selfishness, blindness, insensitivity, so that in his eyes our lives would seem things of horror, sees now that his Son has intervened repeatedly and at great cost to cover, as it were, every evil moment with his Precious Blood. Where there was serious sin, there Christ has planted his Cross. Forgiveness of sin therefore means that now, instead of God seeing a man’s life as an insult and a horror in his sight, he can only see, all that there is to see, a thing of beauty. Our whole life a complete success story in God’s sight. Nothing in our lives remains that is not beautiful for God to see. Complete freedom from all guilt and all blame. The credit for this is Christ’s, of course, not ours:
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it is he who intervened at such unimaginable cost, day after day of our guilt. But a thing is as God sees it. When God can only see our lives as things of beauty, that is how they truly are. One further joy to consider: the worse the fault was, the greater the generosity of Christ’s work, the more beauty now for God to see. In short, the worse it was, the better it is. Certainty of forgiveness – what it means Gratitude to Jesus who has saved us at such a price, should be with us life-long. Never to look back on the past in dismay, under pain of insulting God, of sinful mistrust of his goodness, of lack of faith. To see the moments of our worst evil only as times of God’s mercy. Never to see our past sins without gratitude to God, and with only the sweetest contrition. Never to fear rejection by God, no matter what the past evil was. Never bitterness, agony at past failures, remorse. There is a whole way of life involved here. It is one of joy and reparation. Its source they call humility; and its practice penitence. It is not much known to Christians today, I believe. How forgiveness happens; two sorts of sorrow Forgiveness happens when a sinner, totally sincerely, asks God for mercy. Sincerity involves being sorry. Being
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sorry doubtless involves an element of feeling sorry but also, and more important by far, the intention not to do the sinful action again. ‘Intention’ can vary in degree as we are muddled, complicated and contradictory-minded people. Perhaps the lowest degree of ‘intention’ for sorrow and for sincerity would be this: ‘I wish I could live as God tells me, as his Church asks; I’m pretty sure I can’t; but I would like to.’ Two ‘degrees’ of sorrow could be deduced. A ‘perfect’ contrition where the intention not to sin again, a ‘firm purpose of amendment’, is total, and moreover motivated by unselfish love of God; and secondly an ‘imperfect’ contrition, ‘attrition’ it is sometimes called, where the love is not unselfish or the intention less than total. Now ‘perfect contrition’, involving a sorrow by unselfish love of God, sorrow at the derogation of God’s honour, sorrow at the suffering Christ endured to save from sin, is, in effect, forgiveness achieved. Love of that intensity is incompatible with separation from God. But ‘imperfect contrition’ does not necessarily mean forgiveness follows – ‘I feel guilty; I feel dirty; I let myself down; I’ve looked a fool’ is selfish sorrow; and a half-hearted intention is not perfect sorrow. The need of forgiveness We are sinners. We need saving. At least, it certainly looks as if Christ thought so. One might try, too, asking
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our Lady at the foot of the Cross how seriously she takes sin; she watched him die. The Passion is one result of sin; another could be damnation. Hell exists. It must; given the fact that we will live for ever before God’s face, and given the fact that, by free will, we have it in our power to mutilate ourselves spiritually and make ourselves incapable of enduring proximity to God. The pain of enduring him would be hell. How bad is sin? We know what it cost Christ. How bad is it for us? In Mark (7:21-23) there is a list of things which make us ‘unclean’, ritually unfit to worship, filthy in God’s eyes. Apart from the obvious things, covetousness, malice, deceit, lasciviousness, envy, pride and folly are mentioned. In that case the chances are that there is plenty in me to make Christ think I need saving. Isn’t Christ rather hard? The difficulty is, he loves us. He can’t tolerate in us things that are destroying us. He’d die to put it right. In fact, he did. Asking for mercy If we believe in God, both ‘Contrition’, the ‘perfect’, unselfish sorrow, and ‘Attrition’, the imperfect, more selfcentred sorrow, will lead us to turn to God and ask him for mercy. And men always have so turned to God, or to whatever gods they could imagine, throughout the ages. They have prayed alone, they have prayed with others, they have offered sacrifice. But surely, once God became
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man, they could find a less difficult way of access and a more effective prayer? The touch of Christ If you or I had been in Palestine when our Lord was preaching there, there is no doubt what we would have wanted to do if we were really sorry for our sins. We would have wanted to get him alone, to kneel – almost certainly to touch – and to tell. Indeed, even a wordless touch might have seemed adequate. See how the ‘woman with the issue of blood’ in Mark (5:25-34) knew that a touch would heal. A better example still is the ‘woman who was a sinner’ in Luke 7. This girl had two advantages. First, she really knew she was a sinner and she did not try to fool herself or excuse her lapses. Secondly, she knew that Jesus Christ was there – geographically located in the supper room of Simon the Pharisee. These two items of knowledge dictated her action: she went into the house, walked into the supper room, walked through the guests, knelt at Christ’s feet and kissed his feet. And Christ praised her for what she did and pronounced her free of sin. Notice this. If the girl had not gone into the room and made this encounter with our Lord, we would have doubted either her knowledge of her sinfulness or her knowledge of Christ’s presence and power to forgive. But because she did know Christ was there, to be embraced,
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with power to forgive, and because she loved – therefore she had to do what she did. Notice, she did not content herself with telling God privately in her heart that she was sorry, doubtless she had done that often enough; knowing what she knew, needing what she lacked, she had to make a more direct contact with Christ. In short, the Incarnation must have made a difference to man’s prayer, and especially perhaps to his prayer for forgiveness. The Christian surely has some simple, more direct, effective way of receiving God’s mercy. Is there not a way of ‘touching Christ for forgiveness’?
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Forgiveness granted: the Sacrament of Penance The term is awkward. ‘Going to Confession’, ‘the Sacrament of Reconciliation’ are not much better really. But we know what we mean. The Sacrament of Penance: how it works Now a Sacrament is the way Jesus Christ acts directly, as God and man, in the world. He works through his Body, the Church. You and I need not envy the girl in Luke 7 ‘If only I could touch Christ as she did; if only I could hear Jesus tell me my sins are forgiven’. We can touch Christ as effectively as she did. And we do it the same way, by touching his Body. The only way you can touch is by touching a body... And he, being who he is, is bound to respond; even if there is only a little faith and only a little love he, being who he is, could not fail to respond. Therefore if I want to touch Jesus Christ, if I want to ‘get my arms round him’ for love and mercy, I must embrace his Body. And his Body is the Church. I touch Jesus Christ through the Church. In the Sacrament of Penance what seems to happen is this. I grope my way to Christ in sorrow; perhaps it is imperfect sorrow, perhaps it is coward-sorrow, perhaps
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feeling-dirty-sorrow, but it is sorrow of a sort. That imperfect sorrow is going to be changed, through the touch of Christ, into perfect sorrow. I walk up with ‘attrition’ and I become, through Christ’s touch, contrite. I walk away with all my sins forgiven. Touch Christ with even a little love, even a little faith, and something is bound to happen; in this case, forgiveness of sins. And the way I touch Christ for forgiveness is by touching his Body, the Church, in the Sacrament of Penance. Elaboration A blind man, touched by Christ, gets his sight back. A leper touched by Christ is cleansed. A deaf man touched by Christ hears. A paralytic touched by Christ walks again. A dead man touched by Christ gets his life back. A sinner touched by Christ gets his sins forgiven. But where is Christ to be touched today? If I could present myself to my fellow Christians and tell my sins does not Christ say ‘where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst’? would that suffice? Certainly that is on the right lines. Perhaps if I were to forgive completely and utterly all who had offended me then Christ, who makes such forgiveness a condition of his own mercy for me, would count that as a union of will so intense that it is a ‘touch’? Surely that too is progress. Perhaps if I could open myself to his Spirit by pondering his words of mercy in the Bible, I
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would in some sense be touching Christ? Yes, indeed, in some sense. But in the Sacrament these elements are united, and a power over and above the efficacy of my prayer and the intensity of my need enters in. It is the efficacious prayer of Christ in his Church. I am the vine, says our Lord, you are the branches (Jn 15). St Paul says Christ is the Head, we the members (1 Cor 12). St Peter says Christ is the cornerstone, we living stones built into the edifice depending on him ( Pet 1:2). Make contact in a certain way with those branches, those limbs, those stones – you make contact with Christ himself. ‘Why should I tell my sins to the Priest? Why can’t I go directly to God?’ The answer, one answer, has already been given. You cannot go more ‘directly’ to God than through Christ; and you meet Christ in his Body, the Church. A further answer perhaps, but probably it is reducible to the same, is in the words of Scripture: John 20:21-23. It would be strange if Jesus had expected his apostles to forgive or retain sins without, normally, knowing what they were forgiving or retaining. And to know, presumably they had to be told. It is not surprising that our Lord should expect sinners to be prepared to tell their wrongdoing to those to whom he has given power to forgive.
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But there is a further reason. Every sin, even a private one, in ‘separating’ me, to some extent at least, from God also has the effect of separating me from all – living or dead – who are joined to Christ; from his Body. Since my sin has a ‘communal’ aspect, it is reasonable that the repair, the forgiveness, the expression of sorrow, should involve a public gesture. I don’t have to list my sins in the Catholic weeklies, or announce them in church – but I do normally have to say them to the Church’s representative; that is the way the Sacrament is handled. And it is not only a reasonable way, but a very humane way. These are the three most important reasons. Another might be: so that I could get advice from the Priest. This is trivial compared to the others. The Sacrament distinguished from other forms of prayer Every Sacrament brings a relationship to God of a special sort. It is called ‘Sacramental Grace’. What it is in the Sacrament of Penance will be shown later. Obviously, this good thing only occurs in the Sacrament when Absolution is given. Other forms of prayer for forgiveness will not have this effect. Secondly, there is a certainty about the forgiveness of sin in the Sacrament which is not present in other forms of prayer. Ordinary prayer of petition achieves its result, so to speak, depending on the degree of love and union
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with God. As has been explained, if God has already poured into the soul a perfect sorrow, the sin has, by the same token, been forgiven. But the Sacrament cannot fail: imperfect sorrow, through Christ’s touch, becomes perfect. There are a number of other good results which are not limited to the Sacrament but which are involved in it in an eminent way. All this will be listed later. Here are ways of praying for forgiveness, many of which are used, in fact, or could well be used, in going to Confession: private prayer for forgiveness; public and liturgical prayer for forgiveness, and admission of guilt, as in the Penitential Rite of the Mass; prayer with sacramentals – taking Holy Water, kissing a crucifix. Above all, reception of Holy Communion. This latter, of course, is restricted normally to those who are not in fact in a state of serious sin. Those Catholics are wrong who, in serious sin, go to Communion without having been absolved first. There would in this case be an additional serious sin of sacrilege. In these forms of prayer it is worth noting that there is often a ‘public’ statement of some sort, and a making contact in some way with the ‘body’, the community. In the Sacrament these two elements are obviously present. One touches the Body of Christ, the Church; and one does it publicly, telling one’s sins to another.
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The ‘Sacramental Grace’ Apart from certainty of forgiveness, this is the greatest good thing specific to the Sacrament. There is a long-term effect different in each Sacrament. In three of them it lasts for all eternity: Baptism, Confirmation and the Priesthood make an ‘alteration’ in the spirit, so to speak, such that the person is equipped with a continual and potentially effective demand on God for help needed to perform the ‘office’ to which God has called them. The other Sacraments bring a grace which operates not for eternity, but for as long as necessary in this life. In marriage, the body of the man and of the woman is touched by Christ, and given a power. The result is that when they make love they do not merely, one hopes, bring physical pleasure to each other; nor simply express their love by so doing; nor, sometimes, in the action conceive new life. These three ends of marriage have another added. Now, in the act of love, they actually make each other holy. And probably not just the ‘act of love’, but any loving action of any sort in the marriage will now not only give joy but will actually sanctify. Such, probably, is the sacramental grace of marriage. Their bodies are now instruments of sanctification for each other. And the power lasts as long as the marriage lasts; as long as their two bodies last on this earth.
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Christ touches again in the Anointing of the Sick – the person and the illness. One would therefore expect cure or alleviation, let us say in a cancer. But we must all die, and perhaps this is the time. But still Christ did touch that cancer. The effect is that cell by cell as it grows, moment by moment, in every event of the sickness – painful, depressing, humiliating – it is conferring the life of Christ. The invalid has a sort of built-in mechanism of sanctification; the very thing that is weakening him, will put him into his death agony, put him into eternity is, in fact, making him holy as it happens. The answer to all his needs is in the very disease. So what might be the sacramental grace in the Sacrament of Penance? Here it is not a physical cancer which is touched, but a spiritual one. The root sinfulness, deeper perhaps than words can express, has been put before Christ in his Church; and Christ touches. That root of sin may not be cured, but it is now a weakness consecrated to Christ. It will continue, but touched by Christ it is now a continual appeal not just for mercy, but for union: the man could be holier because of his very weakness. The main thing to understand about sacramental grace is that by it we are, as it were, deputed to a life-style. With absolution we are deputed to Penitence.