Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 51
Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost.
The Forgiveness of Sins.
"And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the man sick of the palsy: Son, be of good heart; thy sins are forgiven thee." — Matt. ix. 2.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Sin general. II. Justification by faith. III. Refutation.
I. True means : I. Baptism and Penance. 2. Virtue and Sacrament. 3. Power delegated.
II. Parts of Sacrament : 1. Contrition. 2. Confession. 3. Satisfaction.
III. De profundis: 1. There is forgiveness. 2. Conversion. 3. Example for others.
Per.: 1. Probatica. 2. Moving of waters. 3. Miracle repeated.
SERMON.
Brethren, it is a deplorable fact that in this world of ours few things are more common than sin. Ever since the fall of man sin has been almost a part of our very nature, for: "Behold," says the Psalmist, "we were begotten in iniquities, and in sin did our mothers conceive us." And besides that original and hereditary guilt, each of us has added to the world's wickedness many actual, personal transgressions, for, says St. John: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Is it not strange, then, that notwithstanding the prevalence and dreadful nature of this spiritual disease, the Christian world should be divided as to its proper remedy? One of the very few tenets upon which the various Protestant sects are united is the doctrine of justification by faith. In the face of innumerable texts of Scripture implying or openly asserting that faith without good works is dead, these scriptural Christians, forsooth, maintain that we achieve forgiveness of our sins by faith alone, by apprehending Christ as the Saviour, and hiding ourselves and our iniquities beneath the broad mantle of His holiness. Belief in Christ, say they, is threefold; belief in the truth of all His works, belief in His power to do all things, and belief in the sufficiency of His merits to cancel all our sins, and this last alone is, they claim, the means of our justification. In refutation of such preposterous doctrine suffice it to say that though Christ on various occasions commended faith as a necessary condition for the restoration of bodily and spiritual health, still He often elsewhere assigns other dispositions — fear, sorrow, love, etc. — as the occasions of His indulgence. Of Magdalen, for example, He said that " much had been forgiven her because she had loved much." Besides, even where faith is mentioned by Him as His mercy's motive, it is evident that He speaks of belief, not in the efficacy of His merits, of which the parties concerned as yet knew nothing, but of belief in His unlimited miraculous power. Finally, the faith applauded by Christ in those instances was very often not at all that of those whom He healed or absolved, but of those who carried the afflicted before Him or besought Him on behalf of the dying or the dead. Thus, Protestants prove too little or too much, that is, they prove nothing.
Brethren, the Catholic Church holds, and has always held, that Baptism and Penance are the two chief means whereby we obtain pardon from God for our sins. That original stain which we inherit with our nature, as well as all actual sins of the unchristened adult, are removed by the grace of Baptism. The remedy for sins committed after Baptism is Penance. " Penance," says St. Jerome, " is, as it were, a plank from the wreck of his baptismal innocence, on which depends the Christian's sole hope of salvation." Faith and fear and hope and love are necessary, yes, but of themselves they do not suffice. They are as so many steps by which the sinner ascends to such exalted virtue that he conceives and manifests a heartfelt sorrow for his sins, not only on account of their intrinsic malice, but more especially because they are offensive to God. Sin's remedy must be as drastic as sin itself. " The sinner," says the Psalmist, " puts on iniquity like a garment, and it goes like water into his entrails, and like oil into his bones." Sin palsies the soul more completely than did his disease the poor cripple of to-day's Gospel, and nothing but that thorough revulsion of its whole being which we call Penance can ever effect its recovery. In the Old Law the virtue of penance was the only means by which forgiveness of sins could be obtained. From Adam to John the Baptist the scriptural message to the sinner was to be converted to the Lord by bringing forth fruits worthy of penance and pardon. It was on account of, and in recognition of, their repentance, and their repentance alone, that God led Israel out of captivity, averted the doom impending over the great city of Ninive, and spared and pardoned David and Ezechias, and Manasses and Achab. So accustomed, indeed, were God's chosen people to regard man's repentance and God's mercy as the essential elements in every reconciliation of the Creator with His creatures, that we find them in to-day's Gospel taking exception to Christ's apparently blasphemous words and sharply demanding: "Who can forgive sins but God?" Their idea was that the forgiving of sins demanded omniscience and omnipotence; omniscience, to know the worthiness of the penitent's disposition, and omnipotence, to obliterate his fault. But Christ, though they knew it not, was God, and He had come not to destroy but to perfect the law, by raising the virtue of penance to the dignity of a sacrament. That Christ as God had the power of forgiving sins needs no demonstration; it is evident from the very definition of sin. That Christ as man enjoyed the same authority, is equally clear, for He says of Himself: "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth," and in to-day's Gospel He rebukes the unbelief of the bystanders by healing the man sick of the palsy, that from His ability to cure bodily ills they might learn that the Son of man hath also power on earth to forgive sins. This power in its fulness He imparted to His Apostles. " As the Father hath sent Me," He says to them, " so also do I send you," that is, with all necessary faculties for the continuance and accomplishment of His earthly mission. To Peter first, and later to all the Apostles, He said: " I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven," and in one of His apparitions to them after His Resurrection, " He breathed on them, and said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." Nor was this concession a personal grant made by Christ to His Apostles on behalf of their fellow-countrymen or their contemporaries. He is the Redeemer, not of this people or that, this or that generation, but of all men of all time, and by virtue of his ordination every successor of the Apostles is clothed with this same celestial power. By reason of her unbroken Apostolic succession, therefore, the priests of the Catholic Church are the only real ministers of Christ, and the only true dispensers of this as well as of His other sacramental mysteries. For, in the sanctifying grace communicated to the soul on the remission of its sins by that outward sign, the absolution of the priest, and the manifestation of sorrow by the penitent, instituted by Christ, we have the three essential elements of a sacrament of the New Law. In its administration the priests act as the vice-gerents, the plenipotentiaries, of Christ on earth, of whom He said: " He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth the Father that sent Me."
Brethren, the Sacrament of Penance does not consist merely in the authoritative pronouncement of the absolution by the priest. Three conditions — contrition, confession, and satisfaction — are necessary on the part of the penitent for its valid and fruitful reception. The natural process of reconciliation was raised by the law to a higher grade, and finds its ultimate perfection in the Gospel. Christ's choice of a little child as the model of spiritual perfection has a broad and deep significance. When as boys we had the misfortune to offend our earthly father by some childish prank, it was usually through the medium of a mother's love that we sought and obtained forgiveness. But the father's pardon was not accorded nor the happy relations of favor and love reestablished without certain necessary preliminaries. We humbly approached our offended parent and openly acknowledged our fault, but that was not enough. We expressed our sorrow, nor did that suffice. We promised to guard against the recurrence of such misdeeds; but still there was something wanting. It was only when we had done all that, and had offered besides to make good by some personal sacrifice the damage done, that the smile of love returned to his countenance and his fond arms opened. By a similar process are His wayward children restored to the grace of their heavenly Father. The sorrow necessary in the Sacrament of Penance is clearly not that perfect contrition which of itself effects justification, for otherwise the sacrament would be a superfluous institution. It is rather attrition, or a sorrow for sin inspired by some less exalted motive than the pure love of God. Still we must never lose sight of the fact that the deeper our sorrow the more efficacious will be the sacrament, for the one essential on which the Whole fruitfulness or barrenness of the sacrament depends is the genuineness of our contrition. We should try to emulate the great models of repentance, the humility of the publican and of the prodigal, the tears of David and of Peter, the ecstatic abandon of Magdalen, the consuming zeal of St. Paul, and the utter disregard of earthly things and earthly opinions displayed by the Emperor Theodosius when he cast aside his crown and his purple, and in the presence of all the people prostrated himself in the dust before the temple of God. In to-day's Gospel Christ absolves the paralytic without the formality of a confession; but Christ's ministers cannot, as He, read the reins and the heart. To the confessor as judge and physician the case must be presented and the disease disclosed. While it is well to manifest even our venial faults, it is absolutely necessary to confess all the mortal sins we are then and there conscious of having committed, together with the number of times and the leading circumstances of their commission. Alas! what care, what order, what exactness are employed in the management of business affairs, in the keeping of business accounts, and how true it is that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Nor is it of least importance to remember that, though the Sacrament of Penance remits the guilt of sin and the eternal punishment that is its due. there remains a temporal atonement to be undergone in this world or the next for the satisfaction of God's offended justice. That the damage done our neighbor by our trespasses must be made good is clear enough; but we often fail to realize that God's claims, too, must be satisfied, and we neglect to discharge by trivial penances here debts which we will be able to cancel hereafter only by the protracted pains of purgatory. " They who fear the frost," says the Scripture, " shall be overtaken by the blizzard."
Brethren, I would that all sinners would read often and carefully the sixth Penitential Psalm, the "De Profundis," and see and hear there the awakening of conscience, the realization of sin and its consequences, the voice of hope, and the possibility of forgiveness and of ultimate salvation for all. "If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities," says the Psalmist, " Lord, who shall stand? " There are times when we feel with Cain that our iniquities are greater than that we may deserve pardon, and were it not for such examples of God's mercy as David, Manasses, Mary Magdalen, Simon Peter, the thief on the cross, and Saul of Tarsus, we should succumb to a Judas-like despair. From their histories we learn that with God there is merciful forgiveness even for the worst of sinners. "I wish not the death of the sinner," He says, "but rather that he be converted and live." John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." His blood, the blood of the New Testament, infinitely meritorious, was poured out for us unto the remission of our sins, and were our sins as scarlet the blood of the Lamb of God is redder still. Stayed on our way to despair by this voice of hope, we, by reason of His law of mercy, wait for the Lord. Out of the depth of our iniquities we cry to Him: "Lord, hear my voice, and let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication." " Our souls rely on His word and our souls have hope in the Lord." Nor will ours be a disappointed hope, for, " an humble and contrite heart the merciful Lord will never despise." And when the sweet grace of conversion has taken possession of our souls, and we feel ourselves once more restored to the condition of children of God and heirs of heaven, then a sense of gratitude and love such as filled the hearts of the afflicted whom Christ healed opens our lips to proclaim to the whole world what great things He that is mighty hath done to us and how hallowed should be His name. Nor do we forget our late companions in sin. " From the morning watch even until night let Israel hope in the Lord." If we have found forgiveness, surely there must be hope for all, " for with the Lord there is mercy and with Him plentiful redemption. Be comforted and encouraged, therefore, O Israel, for the Lord shall redeem thee from all thine iniquities."
Brethren, there was at Jerusalem a pond having five porches, and at certain times its waters were moved by an angel of the Lord, and he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the waters was healed of his infirmities. The Sacrament of Penance, with its five requisites, is the Probatica of the New Jerusalem, and the feelings that at times, in your better moments, come over you — feelings of fear of God, of disgust for sin, of desire for something higher and purer and nobler than your present life, of love for God — these are as the moving of the waters by the angel of the Lord. Delay not, I beg of you; delay not to avail yourself of this means of sanctification. Consider how Christ has labored to make it easy for you. Justification under the law was almost as painful, almost as impossible, as it was for the cripple to reach first the waters of Probatica, but under the Gospel you have but to turn penitently to Christ, and by a word of His mouth you will be made whole. Lay your sin-palsied soul before Him, then, in the tribunal of penance, and doubt not the blessed result. Your spiritual, aye your physical life and health will be restored; your fellow-sinners will be comforted and encouraged and ultimately led to God by your example; and God's glory will be promoted, for the multitudes, seeing your conversion and your restoration to the friendship of God and God's Church through the Sacrament of Penance, will fear and glorify God who hath given such power to men.