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
