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".

24 Hours for the Lord 2023: "..a festal encounter that heals the heart and leaves us with inner peace".

 This annual celebration of Eucharistic adoration and recourse to the Sacrament of Penance should be seen as one of Pope Francis' most significant innovations in the life of the Church. In Rome it is celebrated by the Holy Father in one of the parishes of Rome. In dioceses throughout the world, the pattern of 24 hours of continuous adoration and availability of Confession is followed in at least one church of the diocese. Vatican News carries a report of this year's celebration in Rome: With repentant and trusting hearts we receive the gift of God's mercy. The responsible section of the Dicastery for Evangelisation  prepared a pastoral resource for this year's celebration that is well worth a read, and in part provides a backdrop to Pope Francis homily: 24 Hours for the Lord: Pastoral Resource 17-18 March 2023. The homily is at the website of the Holy See: 24 Hours for the Lord.

In an early paragraph of his homily, Pope Francis compares the Gospel story of the Pharisee and the tax collector as the appear in the Temple to what might happen in our parishes:

People who are extremely rich in their own minds, and proud of their religious accomplishments, consider themselves better than others – how frequently does this happen in a parish: “I’m from Catholic Action; I’m going to help the priest; I do the collection... it’s all about me, me, me”; how often people believe themselves better than others; each of us, in our hearts, should reflect on whether this has ever happened – they feel satisfied that they cut a good figure. They feel comfortable, but they have no room for God because they feel no need for him. And many times “good Catholics”, those who feel upright because they go the parish, go to Mass on Sunday and boast of being righteous, say: “No, I don’t need anything, the Lord has saved me”. What has happened?  They have replaced God with their own ego, and although they recite prayers and perform works of piety, they never really engage in dialogue with the Lord.  They perform monologues in place of dialogue and prayer. Scripture tells us that only “the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds” (Sir 35:1), because only those who are poor in spirit, and conscious of their need of salvation and forgiveness, come into the presence of God; they come before him without vaunting their merits, without pretense or presumption. Because they possess nothing, they find everything, because they find the Lord.

Pope Francis contrasts how "The Pharisee stood by himself" while "The tax collector, on the other hand, stands far off":

Yet that distance, which expresses his sinfulness before the holiness of God, enables him to experience the loving and merciful embrace of the Father. God could come to him precisely because, by standing far off, he had made room for him. He doesn’t speak about himself, he addresses God and asks for forgiveness.

 Pope Francis then explains how we "stand far off" when we approach the Sacrament of Penance (my italics added):

Brothers and sisters, today let each of us make an examination of conscience, because the Pharisee and the tax collector both dwell deep within us. Let us not hide behind the hypocrisy of appearances, but entrust to the Lord’s mercy our darkness, our mistakes. Let us think about our wretchedness, our mistakes, even those that we feel unable to share because of shame, which is alright, but with God they must show themselves. When we go to confession, we stand “far off”, at the back, like the tax collector, in order to acknowledge the distance between God’s dream for our lives and the reality of who we are each day: poor sinners. At that moment, the Lord draws near to us; he bridges the distance and sets us back on our feet. At that moment, when we realize that we are naked, he clothes us with the festal garment. That is, and that must be, the meaning of the sacrament of Reconciliation: a festal encounter that heals the heart and leaves us with inner peace. Not a human tribunal to approach with dread, but a divine embrace in which to find consolation.