• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on good works. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Vince Perry
Catholic Answers
The means by which God forgives sins after baptism is confession: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Minor or venial sins can be confessed directly to God, but for grave or mortal sins, which crush the spiritual life out of the soul, God has instituted a different means for obtaining forgiveness — the sacrament known as confession, penance or reconciliation.
This sacrament is rooted in the mission God gave to Christ in His capacity as the son of man on Earth to go and forgive sins. (Matt. 9:6) After His resurrection, Jesus passed on His mission to forgive sins to His ministers, telling them, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you. … Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:21–23)
In early Christian writings, confessing sins to a priest was accepted as part of the original deposit of faith handed down from the Apostles. They often reminded us that confession and absolution (God’s forgiveness granted through the priest) must be received by a sinner before receiving Holy Communion, for “whoever … eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:27)
As St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, wrote in A.D. 251: “Of how much greater faith and salutary fear are they who … confess their sins to the priests of God in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience. … I beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while the satisfaction and remission made through the priests are still pleasing before the Lord.” (“The Lapsed”, 28)
Kahu Dr. James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
No matter how hard we work, how smart we become, how sincerely we strive we can’t get ourselves out of the predicament we call the human condition. Human beings are intellectually, morally, spiritually limited and imperfect. And what’s more, we are internally conflicted, as St. Paul observed when he said, “The good things I want to be doing, I do not do and the wrong things that I don’t want to be doing I find myself doing.” (Romans, Chapter 7)
It doesn’t take much for us to realize that left to our own devices we’d all be hopelessly lost.
The good news is that God is in the business of reconciliation. God is a God of grace who understands our fragility, confusion, weakness of will, our tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again. In essence, God is the God of second chances who sent his son into human history, who went the distance, giving the ultimate gift of his life to create a new possibility for us and to let us know that we can be reconciled to God.
And as God has reconciled us to him, God also wants us to be reconciled to each other. (2 Corinthians, Chapter 5) This must be just about the most difficult thing for human beings to achieve, and rare when it actually happens.
Forgiving someone, not for a minor offense, but forgiving someone for hurting us deeply can take a long time and a lot of personal work, often years in therapy. Forgiveness is the final stage of healing — of letting go of the pain and it’s power to continue to wound the soul, not necessarily letting go of the memory that caused the pain. But even when forgiveness happens on the part of an individual reconciliation may never happen.
It only takes one to forgive; it takes two to reconcile. When conflict occurs between two parties, it takes a mutual commitment to be vulnerable, a maturity to explore and resolve the conflict and an investment to heal and restore the relationship. Unfortunately, people seem to prefer walking away from a broken relationship, being “nicey-nice” to each other, that is pretending that the relationship is okay when it’s not.
Thankfully, that’s not the way it is with God and us. God cares so much for us that he has and will do everything to have things be right and loving between God and us. God wants us to learn from him and, using the example of Christ, to do likewise in our imperfect relationships. The choice is ours. And the wonderful thing is if we ask him, God will help us.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on
patriotism?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com
• Deadline each week is Tuesday, by 5 p.m.
