Forgiveness Essay Research Paper Forgiveness

Forgiveness Essay, Research Paper

Forgiveness

Christ Jesus some two thousand years ago came into this world to bring

redemption for our sins. He did this through his death and resurrection, or what

we refer to as the pascal mystery. We still encounter the saving presence of the

Lord in the sacraments and in the Word. In each and every sacrament we come face

to face with “the grace of God our Savior” (Titus 2:11). It is this redemption

of sins aspect of the sacraments that I will be examine. In the past couple of

century we have focused are attention primarily on the Sacrament of Penance as

the means to obtain forgiveness of sins after Baptism. We have come to focus on

it so much that it has come to be, for most Catholics, understood as the only

sacrament though which forgiveness of sins is obtained. This belief as we will

see is an incorrect understanding because we encounter the saving presence of

the Lord in other sacraments and ways not only in the Sacrament of Penance.

However the Sacrament of Penance is always to be understood as the primary

sacrament for forgiveness of mortal sins after Baptism.

To better understand how this can be let us first look at the general

background of the development of the Sacrament of Penance. The Sacrament of

Penance has it’s roots even as far back as the day of resurrection when Christ

breathed out the spirit on the disciples and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy

Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s

sins, they are retained.’ (John 20:22-23). In Paul’s second letter to the

Corinthians we see Paul developing this teaching of Christ, when he says ‘All

this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the

ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to

himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the

message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his

appeal through us. We beseech you…be reconciled to God. For our sake he made

him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness

of God( 2 Cor. 5:18-21). These two passages would seem to be part of the

sacrament’s biblical foundation. The sacrament itself would seem to have come

about as a result of the early Church’s struggle to recognize that Baptism may

forgive sin but it didn’t end the struggle against sin. People fell into sin

even after Baptism, so in order to bring these fallen members back into the

Christian community the Sacrament of Penance was established.

In the second and up to the sixth century A.D. a Christian could only

receive the Sacrament of Penance once after Baptism. The penitent would have to

first confess before his or her bishop. The penitent would then be required to

participate in the “order of penitents” of the early Church. This required the

penitent to wear special clothes, and the penitent would have to go to a special

place with other penitents when worshipping with the community. The community

would pray for those in the “order of penitents” during the worship serves, and

the bishop would lay his hands on the penitents. But this laying on of hands did

not take on the character of absolution until it was done during the worship

serves on Thursday of Holy Week. The penitents were not allowed to receive

Eucharist because the penitents were excommunicated, excluded from Communion.

After a period of probation, prescribed by the bishop, the penitent would be

absolved of the sins the individual committed. The bishop would do this by

laying his hands on the penitent. The typical time for this reconciliation to

take place was on Thursday of Holy Week before the Baptisms took place. The

reason it was done at this time was because the early Church believed that both

Baptism and Penance were both sacraments that brought about forgiveness of sins

and that they should be prepared for at the same time. It was just this type of

thinking that also led the early Church to the belief that the sacrament could

only be received once. This time of preparation, for the Sacrament of

Reconciliation, has come to be what we refer to now as the liturgical season of

Lent. This belief that the sacrament could only be received once and due to the

strict penance received for sins it became customary among Christians of these

earlier centuries to wait to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation until just

before death. The early Church only saw public confession necessary if you had

committed the sins of murder, apostasy, or adultery. Sense confession was only

necessary in the case of these three serious sins, which were serious acts

against the Christian community, and do to its connections with Baptism on

Thursday of Holy Week it was viewed as a part of public worship. It was

considered part of public worship up to the end of the sixth century A.D. and

the beginning of the seventh century A.D. at which time a transition took place

in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Due to the severity of the penance imposed on people for sins committed,

and the belief in being only allowed to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation

once. People avoided the public canonical penance till the end of their lives.

This caused a decline in the public penance to the point of almost total

extinction towards the end of the sixth century A.D. Another transition was

taking place in the Sacrament of Baptism about this same time that also raised

question of concern in regards to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. During the

fifth and sixth centuries A.D. there was a larger number of adult converts

accepted into the Christian community that lacked proper instruction and

catechizes. This occurred do to the fact that it was customary to join the

religion that the leader of a society was part of, so if the leader of the

society was Christian all those who followed that individual would become

Christian. This resulted in a large numbers of adult Baptisms. But at the end

of the sixth centuryA.D. and beginning of the seventh century A.D. the Church’s

baptismal policy changed. The Church started to emphasize infant Baptism rather

them adult Baptism. This change in emphasis to infant baptism and the decline in

the number of people participating in the public canonical penance presented

some new pastoral problems that needed to be addressed. First, how could the

Church maintain its high moral standards, and at the same time, present to those

members of the Church that fell into sin the ability to be reconciled based on a

more realistic program? Second, it was one thing to require those Baptized as

adult to do public penance. But it would be a whole deferent thing to ask those

Baptized as infants and young children, who had to still live and struggle

through all the stages of growth prior to adulthood, to do the same public

penance and only be allowed to do it once.

To address these issues a new form of penance emerged in the seventh

century A.D., which is often referred to as “private” or “tariff” penance by

scholars. It was referred to as “tariff” penance because a priest would assign

penance to individuals who confessed their sins in private from a collection of

handbooks called a Penitential Books. Penitential Books were handbooks that

listed sins and customary penances, which was usually some period of fasting,

that were given by other priests for the particular sin listed. This new form of

private or tariff penance was deferent from the earlier, and still practiced,

form of public canonical penance. It was different in that the whole rite was

done in privately and by a priest rather then the bishop. Private penance could

also be received as many times as one felt the need for it. These three new

characteristic of privacy, priest as presider, and the ability to receive the

Sacrament of Reconciliation more then once addressed the pastoral issues that

had emerged at the end of the sixth century A.D. This made the new rite popular

among the Christian community.

It seems to be a consensus among scholars that tariff penance has its

origins in the British Isles, most scholars would say primarily in Ireland. They

also belief that monk-missionaries are responsible for tariff penance making its

way on to the European continent between the years 543 A.D. and 615 A.D. After

it had arrived on the European continent, the tariff penance the monks had

brought was modified because some of the penances given in the Penitential Books

appeared to be to harsh. This need to reduce the harshness of the penance gave

birth to a system called “commutation.” Commutation is a system by which the