‘Your sins are forgiven’

REFLECTIONS OF A NEW PRIEST: Celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation has stood out as a deeply humbling and fulfilling dimension of priesthood.

Father Tom Fallati

Recently I was in our parish school’s second-grade class to give final preparations for First Reconciliation. To illustrate the completeness of God’s forgiveness, I had planned to erase text on the chalkboard. Instead, I discovered that I had to push the “delete” key to wipe out the text on the screen of the classroom “smartboard!” Technology has changed since my time in school, but the Lord’s promise remains the same: “I have brushed away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like a mist” (Is. 44:22).

Celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation has stood out as a deeply humbling and fulfilling dimension of priesthood since my ordination in May, yet the sacrament has taken on a special meaning at this time. I participated last month in my first “First Reconciliation” service as a priest, hearing the earnest confessions of a number of second graders. This month, as we enter the season of Advent, I will participate in my first parish penance services.

Advent, with its focus both on penance and hope, offers a wonderful time to consider the great gift of God’s mercy. It is a gift that I have witnessed especially as a priest.

THE SACRAMENT OF MERCY

Forgiveness forms a central theme of the Gospels. Jesus exercised the authority to forgive sins, even to the scandal of those around him. He regularly forgave sins, even assuring the penitent thief of his place in paradise. 

But more than simply forgiving sins, Jesus preached that it is God who desires that we be reconciled to him. Jesus conveyed this desire through moving images, like the father awaiting his wayward son’s return with open arms, or the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to rescue the one who has strayed. 

When we sin, we turn inward, seeking to satisfy our own will and not God’s. Yet we find ourselves unsatisfied and often saddened, even distant from God and anyone we may have hurt. God’s heart burns with the desire to heal us. 

God so strongly desires our reconciliation that he gave to the Church the means by which we can receive his forgiveness. The Risen Lord, appearing to the apostles, breathed on them and proclaimed, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn. 20:22-23). Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Church exercises that ministry. 

THE GIFT OF GOD’S MERCY

In confession, people come before me seeking God’s mercy. They humbly acknowledge how they have fallen short. And in hearing of others’ sins, I am confronted with my own. 

And yet the Lord uses priests as instruments to confer his forgiveness. At the end of a confession, we at last raise our hands and proclaim the words of absolution: “I absolve you from your sins.” The priest speaks in the first person, but it is Christ speaking through him.   

What a privilege and joy to see the faces of penitents brightened. At times their whole bearing changes, making visible the lifting of a weight they had been carrying.

This makes the sacrament such a gift. The sacrament offers an opportunity to hear Christ’s words of forgiveness, to hear Jesus’ words to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk. 2:5). 

In this Advent season, we are reminded of this great gift of the Lord. St. Francis de Sales echoes the Lord’s call: “Never allow your heart to abide heavy with sin, seeing that there is so sure and safe a remedy at hand.”

Father Tom Fallati is parochial vicar at St. Kateri Tekakwitha parish in Schenectady.