Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy: The Sacrament of Penance

The days 28th - 30th March 2025 are being marked as a Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy. A news report ahead of this event can be found at Vatican News: Jubilee of Missionaries of Mercy bringing 500 priests worldwide. The event coincides with the 2025 celebration of "24 hours for the Lord".

For several years now the Friday/Saturday immediately before the fourth Sunday in Lent has been marked by a celebration of "24 Hours for the Lord", a particular time of prayer and recourse to the Sacrament of Penance. It is intended that the celebration take place at all levels in the Church, including at parish level. An introduction to the theme of the celebration for the Jubilee Year is here.

The purpose of the event is to put the sacrament of reconciliation back at the center of the pastoral life of the Church, and consequently, of our communities, parishes, and all ecclesial realities. This is the centre of the Gospel message: the Mercy of God, which gives us the certainty that before the Lord no one will find a judge, but rather will find a father who welcomes him, consoles him and also shows him the way to renewal.

I have a preference for referring to the sacrament as the Sacrament of Penance because that is the title used of the sacrament in the Code of Canon Law (cc. 959-997). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn.1423 - 1424), however, explains several different names for the sacrament. I have added the bold below to highlight each of them:

1423 It is called the sacrament of conversion because it makes sacramentally present Jesus' call to conversion, the first step in returning to the Father from whom one has strayed by sin.
It is called the sacrament of Penance, since it consecrates the Christian sinner's personal and ecclesial steps of conversion, penance, and satisfaction.

1424 It is called the sacrament of confession, since the disclosure or confession of sins to a priest is an essential element of this sacrament. In a profound sense it is also a "confession" - acknowledgment and praise - of the holiness of God and of his mercy toward sinful man.
It is called the sacrament of forgiveness, since by the priest's sacramental absolution God grants the penitent "pardon and peace."
It is called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles: "Be reconciled to God." He who lives by God's merciful love is ready to respond to the Lord's call: "Go; first be reconciled to your brother."

One of the more remarkable books about the sacrament is Adrienne von Speyr's book entitled Confession. The German original dates from 1960, with the Ignatius Press English translation dating from 1985. The book has a preface by Adrienne's close collaborator Hans Urs von Balthasar. (The site Balthasar and Speyr gives more information about the lives and work of these two). Adrienne's book ranges from a presentation of confession in its Christological and ecclesial dimensions (two early chapters are entitled "Confession in the life of the Lord" and "The Confession on the Cross") to very practical insights into the experience that we should have of  the sacrament (in chapters entitled "Types of Confession" and "The Act of Confession", which respectively look at confession in the context of different states and experiences of life and at the different specific steps taken in approaching and receiving the sacrament). It is striking that one can dip into this book, written essentially before Vatican II, and yet recognise in it much that is reflected in the passage from the Catechism quoted above, even though the book itself inescapably depends on the term "confession" used of the sacrament.

The attitude out of which the Son speaks his "I am thirsty" and "My God, why have you forsaken me?" on the Cross is not only an expression of his unique suffering; it is simultaneously the essence of every correct confessional attitude. The penitent who receives the sacrament of the fruit of the Cross, who stands naked and exposed before the Father, must thirst for absolution and for the nearness of God that he has lost through sin. If he confesses openly and with humility, God will grant him this thirst and this yearning to be stilled - not as something the penitent imagines or presses out of himself, as it were, but as an objective gift of grace.... Only when he receives absolution does sin become an objective quantity for him, something that no longer clings to his person, yet something from which he still must separate himself and take leave of in a highly conscious act.... The sinner's burning, thirsting desire for absolution should generate something enduring, namely, that perpetual search for God that characterises love here below, a searching which is the discipleship of the suffering and "confessing" Son on the Cross who thirsts more and more until finally "it is finished".