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.