Public Nature Of Sin And The Penance example essay topic

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 'Allt his 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 century. 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 amore 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 preside r, 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 it sway 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 harshness of the pena nce given for a sin was reduced or commuted. Several types of this commutation system emerged, but it was easy for the unjust priest to manipulate this system to benefit themselves. In some cases the penitent would be forced to give an offering to the priest for the purpose of celebrating Mass for the penitent's forgiveness, but some priests found this to be more of a profitable enterprise rather then that of an acceptable penance. There were other abuses of the commutation system, but all such abuses were condemned by the Church. It eventually became the norm of the Church that the fasting that was imposed by the Penitential Books was to be replaced by prayers.

Another form of penance that was replaced by prayers was that of public penance. The public canonical penance emphasized the public nature of sin, and the penance given for sins was of a public nature. The penitent would be required to do such things as visit and take care of the poor, sick, and imprisoned. Private penance on the other hand accepted the penitent's confession as satisfactory for forgiveness of sins with the stipulation that the penitent do the prayers given as penance. This emphasis on prayer rather then fasting and public penance made private penance even more popular among Christians. Private penance eventually won out over all the other forms of reconciliation in the Western Church.

The Church began to recognize this and in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council made it a requirement that all Catholics at 'the age of discretion' must confess their serious sins to a priest once a year and attained the Eucharistic liturgy and receive the Eucharist during the Easter season. We can see that private penance, due to its popularity and from this mandate made by the Fourth Lateran Council, by the thirteenth century had all but replaced the other forms of reconciliation found in the earlier centuries of Christianity. The Catholic Church also during the Reformation of the sixteenth century defended private penance against reformers who believed that private penance was not necessary for the forgiveness of sins. The Council of Trent, in 1551, stated that 'private confession was absolutely necessary for mortal sins, which had to be confessed to a qualified priest according to number, type, and special circumstance. Trent also made it clear that the Sacrament of Penance was necessary for the salvation of persons who sinned seriously after Baptism. ' The standards set by the Fourth Lateran Council and the Council of Trent have been restated time and again by official Church documents up to the present day.

Reconciliation was never meant to be solely attached only to the Sacrament of Penance. We find forgiveness anytime we encounter the saving presence of the Lord in other sacraments and ways not only in the Sacrament of Penance. One way of showing the truth of this statement is to look at the role that Lord's Prayer plays in different liturgical rites. St. Augustine shows tha the holds this point of view himself when he says 'The remission of sin takes place not solely in the sacred ablution of Baptism, but in the daily recitation of the Lord's Prayer. In it you have, as it were, your daily baptism.

' Most scholars believe that during the first six centuries of Christianity daily faults and sins were believed to be forgiven by the devotional practices and prayer, most importantly the Our Father. Because the only sins that called for public canonical penance were those of murder, apostasy, or adultery. The Lord " sPrayer was an important part of worship in the early Church, and still is today. It was so important that the candidates for Baptism had to recite the prayer before they received Baptism. The Our Father was also recited by the priest or bishop in public penance for the sake of all, and the one to be also had to recite it before the took place. The early Church, I dare say, believed that all the sacraments were sacraments of reconciliation, of which the Lord's Prayer was the 'perfect verbal expression.

' The Liturgy of the Hours is also a source of reconciliation because it ends with the Our Father. St. Benedict himself emphasizes, in his Rule, that at morning and evening prayer the Lord's Prayer is to be said aloud so all the monks may here the phrase 'forgive us as we forgive. ' He emphasized this so that there might be perfect reconciliation between the monks each evening and morning. The Our Father is also found in the Liturgy of the Eucharist which is the ultimate expression of reconciliation in itself because it is the ultimate expression of the pascal mystery. The Lord's Prayer has always held a climatic role in the Eucharist. It has always been the introduction to communion in the Eucharistic Liturgy.

One reason given for it being the introduction to communion was the petition 'forgive us as we forgive. ' St. Augustine says the reason we pray the Lord's Prayer at this point is so that 'after these words 'forgive uses we forgive' we may approach the alter confidently and literally 'with washed faces. ' What St. Augustine meant by this is that the Our Father makes it possible for Christians to receive the Eucharist because they had in a spiritual sense 'washed their faces' of sin. The Liturgy of the Eucharist is itself another expression of reconciliation The place in the Eucharistic Liturgy that forgiveness is most apparent is in the preparation to receive communion. The preparation consists of the Our Father, the prayer that follows, 'Deliver us, O Lord from every evil... ,' then the prayer for peace, 'Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, I leave you peace... ,' and finally the private prayers said by the priest. This small group of prayers combined with the acclamation 'Lamb of God " is in itself a penitential rite.

This penitential rite emphasizes the forgiveness offered to all in the Eucharist. If we take a closer look at these prayers, we can see how they emphasize the power of forgiveness found in the Body and Blood of Christ. Lets take for an example one of the private prayers recited by the priest just before communion is distributed to the faithful, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, by the will of the father and the work of the Holy Spirit, your death brought life to the world. By your holy Body and Blood free me from all my sins and from every evil... ' This private prayer of the priest is putting emphasize on the fact that it is the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus that frees us from our sins. It would seem then that by receiving the body and blood of Christ we are also receiving forgiveness.

We can see by looking at Church history that the Sacrament of Penance was primarily for the forgiveness of mortal sins. We can also easily see how forgiveness is offered to us in other sacraments and ways, such as in prayers like the Our Father. Based on these two facts, and many not mentioned, I would have to say that it is incorrect to say that after Baptism we can only obtain forgiveness of sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Because we can see how this other sacraments and ways enable us to encounter the saving presence of the Lord. We should always understand the Sacrament of Penance as the primary sacrament for forgiveness of mortal sins after Baptism.

Because history shows us that these sins are sins that damage more then just the one sinning and demand a form of reconciliation that reconciles the sinner with the whole Body of Christ, the Church. It would seem to me sense the early Church did not see all sins as needing the Sacrament of Penance there is no reason not to belief that venial sins are forgiven in other sacraments and rituals. We even have proof that saints such as St. Benedict and St. Augustine held that we could find forgiveness in other ways then just that of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Bibliography

Dudley, Martin: Confession and Absolution: 1990, The Liturgical Press (243.
4, D 848). Hamelin, Leone: Reconciliation in the Church: 1980, The Liturgical Press (243.
4, H 213). Jeep, Elizabeth: The Rite of Penance: Commentaries Volume Two, Implementing the Rite: 1976, The Liturgical Conference (243.
4, L 782 r vs. 2). Keefer, Ralph: The Rite of Penance: Commentaries Volume One, Understanding the Document: 1975, The Liturgical Conference (243.
4, L 782 r vs. 1). Longley, Alfred: Healing and Forgiveness, A New Penitential: 1976, World Library Publications Inc.
243.4, L 856) Mitchell, Nathan, OSB: The Rite of Penance: Commentaries Volume Three, Background and Directions: 1978, The Liturgical Conference (243.