HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
from issue no. 01 - 2010
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The sacrament of Confession and the capacity for peace
Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia,
21 December 2009
by Benedict XVI
“Today we must learn once more how to acknowledge guilt, we must
shake off the illusion of being innocent. We must learn how to do penance,
to let ourselves be transformed; to reach out to the other and to let God
give us the courage and strength for this renewal. Today, in this world of
ours, we need to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.
The fact that it has largely disappeared from the daily life and habits of
Christians is a symptom of a loss of truthfulness with regard both to
ourselves and to God; a loss that endangers our humanity and diminishes our
capacity for peace. Saint Bonaventure was of the opinion that the Sacrament
of Penance was a sacrament of humanity as such, a sacrament that God had
instituted in its essence immediately after original sin through the
penance He imposed on Adam, even though it could only take on its full
shape in Christ, Who is the reconciling power of God in person and Who took
our penance upon Himself. In fact, the unity of sin, repentance and
forgiveness is one of the fundamental conditions for being truly human:
these conditions find complete expression in the sacrament, yet in their
deepest roots they are part of the experience of being human persons as
such“.
