During the Paschal Vigil one week and one day ago, the Church all over the world baptized the adult converts who had spent months preparing to declare their faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, so that they could find life in his name.
Then on Easter Sunday morning, all those who are already baptized renewed the promises of their Baptism and rededicated themselves to living according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And every day throughout this week, the Octave of Easter, the texts of the sacred liturgy have drawn us back over and again to contemplate the meaning of Holy Baptism.
For example, on Thursday in the opening prayer or Collect, we asked: “O God, who have united the many nations in confessing your Name, grant that those reborn in the font of Baptism may be one in the faith of their hearts and the homage of their deeds.”
And on Saturday morning we prayed: “O God, who by the abundance of your grace give increase to the peoples who believe in you, look with favor on those you have chosen, and clothe with blessed immortality those reborn through the Sacrament of Baptism.”
And finally, we prayed just a few minutes ago in the Collect for today: “God of everlasting mercy, who in the very recurrence of the paschal feast kindle the faith of the people you have made your own, increase, we pray, the grace you have bestowed that all may grasp and rightly understand in what font they have been washed, by whose Spirit they have been reborn, by whose Blood they have been redeemed.”
The meaning of these prayers is clear: by grace, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who are baptized by water and the Holy Spirit are born again and made a new creation, capable of living in peace and in the unity of the Church.
But notice that the prayers also insist that we must respond to these gifts of grace by grasping and rightly understanding the sacred mysteries of redemption which are revealed in the Gospel and made present to us in the sacraments. In other words, for our Baptism to have its intended effects, we must - as Saint John explains in today’s second lesson - keep the Commandments of God. We must live the law of love.
But what happens when we don’t live the law of love? What happens when we don’t grasp in what font we have been washed and by whose Blood we have been redeemed? What happens, in other words, when even after Holy Baptism, we turn away from Christ and return to the rebellion of sin?
The Lord Jesus himself provided the answer to these questions in the Upper Room on the evening of his Resurrection. Passing through the locked doors of their fear, the Risen Lord came to his Apostles, stood in their midst and said: “Peace be with you.”
Then he showed them his hands and his side. He showed them the holy wounds that remain even in his resurrected body as everlasting signs of his passion and death. Then he said to them again: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”
Friends, on the day of his Resurrection, the Lord Jesus gave to his Church the extraordinary gift of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. In his very first words to the Apostles after he rose from the dead, Christ granted sinful men the authority to forgive sins in his Name so that we can be reconciled to him and to his Church as often as needed after Baptism.
But notice where this gift was given to us: in the Upper Room - the Supper Room in which on Holy Thursday night the Passover of Israel became the Eucharist of the Church. The sacraments of the Priesthood, the Eucharist, and Penance were all given to us in the very same room, and that reveals to us their intimate connection.
Put most simply: we are baptized so that we can go to Mass and receive Holy Communion, and when we lapse into grave sin after Baptism, we go to Confession so that we can be restored to the life of grace and be made ready once again to receive Holy Communion.
This is why children in the Latin Rite who are being prepared to receive their first Holy Communion are also prepared to go to Confession for the first time and so renew the grace of their Baptism in preparation for being nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ.
And this is also why we should never receive Holy Communion unless we are truly living according to the grace of our Baptism by keeping the Commandments. And when we fail to live the law of love, then we are made ready to receive Holy Communion again by going to Confession.
Now this point is crucial: the Sacrament of Penance is not an option that Catholics are free to use or not, according to their preferences. Going to Confession is an essential part of the sacramental economy of grace in the New Covenant, and this sacrament of mercy was instituted by Christ as an ordinary means of grace for his Church. Failing to go to Confession can damage or even destroy one’s communion with Christ and with his Church.
We should therefore go to Confession as often as needed and at least once each year, but we should also not go too often lest we reduce the grace of God to something automatic or mechanical or fall prey to the scrupulosity which leads to despair. And going to Confession is neither spiritual direction nor pastoral counseling; it is simply the forgiveness of sins confessed with contrition and purpose of amendment leading to absolution and the renewal of the grace of Holy Baptism.
Here we must note that our Protestant brethren threw away the Sacrament of Penance when they also rejected the sacramentality of marriage, anointing of the sick, the ministerial priesthood, and the Holy Eucharist as the true sacrifice of the Cross. And so now 500 years after the Reformation, Protestants often ask Catholics: Why confess your sins to a priest when you can go directly to God?
And the simple answer is this: We do confess our sins to God, but we do so through the unworthy instrument of his priest, who is himself a sinner in need of absolution. And we receive God’s mercy through a priest because the Lord Jesus asks us to do so. Christ gave us this beautiful means of divine mercy on the very day he rose from the dead. The Sacrament of Penance is the Easter gift of the Risen Lord Jesus to his Church.
Then on the Eighth Day of the Resurrection, back again in the Upper Room, the Risen Lord revealed himself and his glorified wounds to the Apostle Thomas, whose doubts were resolved by the same grace of God which forgives sins and awakens saving faith even in those who have not seen the risen human body of the Savior but who do see him in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar in which he gives us his Body and Blood as the medicine of immortality.
So when we encounter the Risen Christ in the Holy Eucharist, then by the grace of our Baptism, let us also confess him to be in our hearts, in our minds, and in our lives: my Lord and my God.
Christos Anesti. Alithos Anesti!
Christ is Risen. Truly He is Risen! Alleluia. Alleluia!
This is the text of my homily for 7 April 2024, the Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday).
Fr Jay Scott Newman