Sacrament of Reconciliation - A Challenge to Human Existence

Reconciliation's greatest challenge to human existence is God's healing and forgiveness - without retribution, without excuse, without merit, and without reason. Receiving and accepting God's unconditional forgiveness is a challenge. The second greatest challenge is for us to ask God to "forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who have trespassed against us."

As a Christian people, we are called to live in peace and harmony and the way to do that is through conversion and reconciliation. According to Mark O'Keefe, O.S.B., "Conversion is the total - if never entirely complete - surrender of the person to God as revealed in Jesus Christ." (Becoming Good, Becoming Holy: On the Relationship of Christian Ethics and Spirituality, p. 27). Christian conversion encompasses every aspect of Christian life and grounds all efforts to live in peace and harmony, reconciled with self, God, others, and the world. In this article, I will outline these four relationships, and then I will look at how our Church has approached this challenge to human existence.

Reconciliation challenges us to be at peace with ourselves. Our shortcomings, faults and failings are difficult things to accept, especially if we are filled with a pride that inflates or deflates our egos. Knowing our sinfulness and answering the call to repentance is given to us through God's grace. And, even though it is God's grace, we still have the free will of choice. Accepting this knowledge of sin and need for God is a choice that must be made consciously. Our sin not only hurts another, but ourselves as well. Being at peace with self presupposes an authenticity and freedom from the guilt of our sins. For many of us, this is a long and difficult journey.

Reconciliation challenges us to be at peace with others. We need to accept the faults of others the way we want to be accepted. We are challenged to become more kind and loving towards those who are different, or who disagree with us. We need to cease being critical and manipulative. Rather than taking out our frustrations and problems on others we need to be more compassionate and accepting of others and ourselves. Belittling comments and tearing others down to build ourselves up is wrong and does not bring peace. Our selfishness and irritability are challenges to conversion when our call is to reach out to others. We are called to live out the Gospel message.

We are challenged by reconciliation to be at peace with God. Being in relationship requires spending time with the Other. In our busy lives we must make choices that ensure time for prayer and sacraments. We need to take the time and effort to praise, to petition, to listen, to thank, to worship and adore our God. When we are at peace with God, we are trusting, caring, generous and strive to love God and neighbour. It also means that in times of trial, crisis, or chaos, we turn to God rather than anaesthetise ourselves with food, drugs, tobacco and/or alcohol. Turning to God at these times is not part of today's culture of the "quick fix."

Reconciliation challenges us to be at peace with the world. The arms race in which so many are engaged is not a way to preserve peace in the world. Extravagant sums are being spent for weapons in the face of poverty, hunger and death for so many peoples in the world. Acts of war, "ethnic cleansing," total annihilation of cultures, of indigenous peoples, violence, terrorism, torture, and repression are all challenges to world peace. There are also ways of intervening that we often deem unimportant, but that can make a difference. Letters of protest to parliament, signing of petitions, not buying coffee in styrofoam cups, attending protests for peace, and using environmentally friendly products are all ways that we can be in a peaceful relationship with our world. Participating in such activities calls us to a constant attentiveness and awareness. God has called us to be good stewards of the earth.

Peace for our world is not just an absence of war but an enterprise of justice. Social, economic, employment, gender, and racial inequalities are writ large in today's world. Profits over people, sweatshops, so called free-trade, work-fare, exploitation of the land, pollution, homelessness and ghettos continue to be global issues. Reconciliation challenges the human sins of pride, avarice, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. It also challenges division.

We can be healing from these injustices and divisons through the sacrament of Reconciliation. Reconciliation is an encounter with God who forgives us through Christ in the Spirit. Sacred Scriptures tell us that we are called to make a commitment to ongoing conversion, which will form and transform our consciences through God's grace. According to Pope John Paul II, "Reconciliation leads us to a penitential attitude of life as an ongoing dimension of the Christian experience." document

The longing for sincere and consistent reconciliation is a fundamental driving force in our society - a heart-felt longing for peace. In Reconciliation and Penance, the Holy Father speaks of "every institution . . . concerned with serving people and saving them . . . must closely study reconciliation in order to grasp more fully its meaning and significance and in order to draw the necessary practical conclusions." The Church is in the world and some of the structures within herself are signs of the divisions that affect human society.

In December of 1999, the International Theological Commission wrote Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past. Cardinal Ratziner, et. al. speak of reconciliation as an act of courage and humility in recognising the wrongs done by Christians. When the Pope reveals an unconditional trust in the power of Truth in a spirit of authenticity and gratuitousness we know reconciliation is a challenge to human existence.

John Paul II adds: "As the successor of Peter, I ask that in this year of mercy, the Church, strong in holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters." In reiterating that "Christians are invited to acknowledge, before God and before those offended by their actions, the faults which they have committed," the Pope concludes, "Let them do so without seeking anything in return, but strengthened only by 'the love of God which has been poured in our hearts' (Romans 5.5)".

When we confess the faults of the past to Christ our Saviour, we also praise God for his merciful love down through the ages. We not only believe in the existence of sin, but also in the forgiveness of sins.

Acknowledging the faults of the past elicits radical implications for the Church and all her members. It is an act of courage and honesty which strengthens our faith. Being reconciled includes an admission of our sinful behaviour as well as our sinful inaction. Through reconciliation, the Church gives witness to the God of mercy and compassion and to God's liberating salvation in the world. John Paul II states that, "The request for forgiveness . . . primarily concerns the life of the Church, her mission of proclaiming salvation, her witness to Christ, her commitment to unity, in a word, the consistency which should distinguish Christian life. But the light and strength of the Gospel, by which the Church lives, also have the capacity, in a certain sense, to overflow as illumination and support for the decisions and actions of civil society, with full respect for their autonomy." Memory and Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a challenge to human existence. Through it we may hope that people involved in crises fuelled by hatred and woundedness both individually and globally, will be guided by the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation exemplified by the Church in the world.