Forgiveness

If we have injured anyone, and they forgive us, it means that everything is all right again between us, and they treat us as though we had never injured them at all.  It is just the same when God forgives us.  The past is wiped away as though it had never been, and God and ourselves are together once more as though we had never sinned against him.

But before that can happen, we have to do three things: we have to be sorry, we have to say we are sorry, and we have to show we are sorry by making up our minds to turn over a new leaf.

The Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32)

We see these stages very clearly in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The Prodigal Son could not wait for the money that would come to him when his father died, and so he went to his father and asked if he could have it straight away.  Having got the money from his father, he went off to a far country where he wasted the lot on bad companions.  Then came the famine, and he found himself alone in a foreign land, without money or friends or food.  The only way he could keep alive was by looking after pigs and sharing their food.  One day, as he sat there watching them eat, he realised how badly he had behaved in going off with his father’s money and squandering it all.  He now saw it from his father’s point of view, and for the first time he was sorry.  As Jesus puts it, “…he came to himself” (NRSV, Luke 15:17).

At once he made up his mind to set out for home and to own up that he had done wrong.  “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son…’.  And, in order to show that he was really sorry, he decided to work on his father’s farm as a labourer and not to be treated as his son any more.  ‘…treat me like one of your hired hands’ (NRSV, Luke 15:18,19).

But when, weak and footsore and in rags, he came at last within sight of his home, he saw his father come running to welcome him.  And the young man told him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (NRSV, Luke 15:21).  But his father, who had been waiting day by day for this moment, would not let him say any more, but called for his servants to bring out the best robe and put it on him,; and to put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and to prepare a great feast.  So the father showed his forgiveness by treating him as his son again, as though he had never done wrong at all.

Contrition, confession and purpose of amendment

And before we can be forgiven by God and get rid of our sins, we have to do the same.  We have to be sorry – that is contrition.  We have to say we are sorry – that is confession.  And we have to show we are sorry by deciding to make a new start – that is purpose of amendment.  Until we are forgiven, our sins stand there in the way, separating us from God.  We can think of them as a stone wall.  You can build a wall with a few stones or with a large number of small ones.  So a few big sins or a large number of small ones can make a barrier which comes between us and God, and until they are removed by forgiveness they keep us from him.

Importance of forgiveness

It was in order that we might have the opportunity of being forgiven that Jesus Christ, God the Son, came into this world even though it meant being crucified.  You can see how important forgiveness is when you remember how it was on Jesus’ mind on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day.  On Maundy Thursday evening, after supper, he took the cup of wine and, looking ahead to his Crucifixion, said, “This is my blood …which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (NRSV, Matthew 26:28).  And the first thing he said when he was being nailed to the Cross was, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (NRSV, Luke 23:34).  And the very first thing he did after his Resurrection, when he met the Apostles on Easter Day, was to institute the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance) by giving them the right and power to forgive sins on his behalf: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them…” (NRSV, John 20:22,23).

And this same right and power to forgive sins he gives today to priests at their ordination.  So when we confess our sins to a priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we know that we are forgiven and that there is nothing standing between us and God to keep us from him.  Then God and ourselves are together as though we had never sinned, as the Prodigal Son and his father were after the Son’s return home.

There was, of course, one way in which things were not the same.  His father’s money was gone for ever.  Nothing could bring it back.  That was what sin cost his father.

So, too, with us.  There was the Crucifixion.  That happened, and nothing we can do can ever alter that.  That is what our sins cost Jesus.

Jesus was crucified so that we might be forgiven, and one way we can prove that we love him is to seek the forgiveness which he made possible for us at such a fearful cost to himself.

SUMMARY

1. Our sins build up a barrier which separates us from God.  Only God’s forgiveness can remove this barrier and unite us to himself again.

2. Before we can be forgiven we must be sorry (contrition), say we are sorry (confession), and mean to make a fresh start (purpose of amendment).

3. Jesus gives us forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance) (confession to a priest) which he instituted immediately after his Resurrection (John 20:22,23).