Reconciliation

Note: This is only a sketchy outline needing to be fleshed out. I certainly do not represent this as anything at all complete. It is simply an aid to be used in exploring more deeply the subjects and ideas put forth. Hopefully it will provide the user with a contextual framework from in which to develop further the ideas I have set forth here for discussion.

• 1. tried to do away with the idea of sin and punishment for sin and living in Hell.
     
     
  2. We need to do works of penance in order to bring light in the darkness, vision in confusion, love in hate, peace in anxiety, and union in disunion. Conversion means "moving from one version of living to another version." We are talking here more about a way of life than about isolated and individual acts.
     
     
  3. Medieval Monks became a class of penitents for the sake of all of humanity. They set themselves to the task of calling down the power of God's Spirit into the whole vast and complex network of our sin-full human relationships, social order, and culture. The monastery was supposed to be a microcosm of the macrocosm that is God's Kingdom. The monks were supposed to be a model or a paradigm of the way people should relate to one another as well as being a paradigm of the entire social and economic order in the world around them.
     
     Theological Note: God's forgiveness comes first, our repentance follows. God offers, we respond; God proposes, man disposes. Why? Because if a person truly repents deep within his or her heart it is because he or she has hope that change is possible. This hope comes from God; from God's pre-existing gift (or grace) of forgiveness. (Read again, now, the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32).
     
     
     
     
     1. God's pre-existent forgiveness makes possible human repentance. We can love God only because He loved us first!
        
        
     2. The act of "going to confession", specifically to seek the priest's ministering of sacramental absolution, gives us the concrete and experienced assurance of God's saving action in our time, in our condition, and "where we're at". Jesus Christ acts through His Body, the Church, not to change His Father's mind, but rather to change our minds by revealing to us His saving love.
        
        
     3. When we're in sin we're in a state of confusion, of self doubt, and lack the fullness of freedom because of our insecurity about our selves, particularly in terms of our relationship with God. We live in a deadly (mortal) state of sin; spiritual death has its grip on us and we need resurrection. (Read now in John's Gospel, the first activity of Jesus Christ when He rose from the dead, John 20:19-23, the scriptural grounding for this Sacrament).
        
  
  
  
• BASIC SCRIPTURAL SOURCES:
  
  Matthew 16:13-19; 18:18-20; Mark 2:1-17; Luke 7:36-50; John 11:1-46; John 20:19-23.
  
  
• BASIC ACTION:
  
  The penitent presents himself to the priest or bishop of the Church to receive the action of God's forgiveness through the saving work of Christ the Priest ministering through His Body. The penitent acknowledges his sins specifically and admits his need for reconciliation and penance. Reconciliation with the Body of Christ IS reconciliation with Christ acting through His Apostles (those in Holy Orders) upon whom His Spirit rests. Such a sign effects what it signifies - the symbol becomes the reality (which is true for all of the Sacraments!). But forgiveness is effective only to the degree that the prodigal, the penitent, acknowledges a need to return to the Father's house, change his way of living (conversion) and thereupon live in that set of relationships present in the household of the Father.
  
  Theological Note: Read again the Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-46) and note that forgiveness, deliverance, healing, freedom and new life are all inter-connected realities. The "Baptism for the remission of sins" is immersion into the death-resurrection event of Jesus Christ so we can be unbound and go free. All Sacraments emerge out of the events and works of Christ in Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Pentecost, the sum being called "The Paschal Mystery". For that is Christ's "hour", the "baptism" He longed for, and the transmission of His power into His Body, the Church. Another definition of the Church is that she is the continuation of the Christ event down through human time and history.
  
  When all is said and done, there is only one Sacrament, Jesus Christ, expressed and mediated to us in seven highly significant ways through His Body, the Church.