“Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”- —John xx, 23.

SYNOPSIS.—The sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross made these words efficacious. The priest the dispenser of graces by giving Absolution. He is bound by laws, and must give or withhold Absolution according to these laws. The confessor’s position one of greatest responsibility. He must, therefore, proceed with the greatest care.

I. What Absolution is, and to whom it must be given or withheld.
II. One of the principal reasons why it must be withheld.

I. Man, having lost God, can again find Him in Absolution. Definition of Absolution. Conditions on part of the penitent. The priest at times obliged to refuse or postpone Absolution.

II. Some of the reasons why Absolution is withheld. One of the principal reasons is insufficient knowledge of the Holy Truths of Religion. The essentials of Religion, which every Catholic Christian must know. Not only in words but in meaning.

Dear brethren, our divine Redeemer, dearly paid with His own life the price to make these words efficacious: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.” What tortures, what suffering, and what an agonizing death! We are so superficial, so careless, so worldly, that many of us think it depends upon the priest to give or to withhold absolution, as he thinks best. No, dear friends, in this you are very much mistaken. The minister of God is but the dispenser of the graces and merits of Jesus Christ; he can only dispense them according to prescribed laws. An awful responsibility it is for a priest to exercise this sublime office, in which he runs the risk of being himself condemned while saving others. An exact account will be demanded from the priest on the day of judgment, when all the absolutions that he has pronounced will be examined by God Himself, as to whether he has been too lavish with the graces of heaven or too strict. How difficult it is sometimes, to be correct in judgment, to be always accurate! How many priests at the last day will wish that they had never taken Holy Orders, but had remained laymen! The priest has the power to remit sins, and he also has the power of retaining them, and St. Gregory the Great says, that a priest should thoroughly investigate the disposition of a penitent before he gives him absolution. He should see whether his heart is changed, and if all those resolutions have been made which a converted sinner owes to God. It is therefore clear that the dispenser of grace must postpone or withhold absolution from certain sinners, if he does not want to be lost together with this sinner. I will try and show you therefore:

I. What absolution is; and to whom it should be given or withheld.
II. One of the principal reasons why it must be withheld.

Listen well, because this is a very important subject, it is a question of your salvation or damnation.

 

I.How fortunate is man, dear brethren, and yet how culpable! I say fortunate, for, having lost his God, heaven, and his soul, he has at his disposal such an easy means to recover what he lost. A wealthy man, who loses his fortune, is often unable to recover it; the Christian, however, having lost his eternal fortune, can regain it with but little sincere effort. O my God, how great is Thy love for the sinner, for Thou dost offer him this means of regaining heaven! But I said also culpable, for we could obtain so many benefits and yet we despise them! You have forfeited heaven, my friend, and yet you live on in this wretchedness? You, sinful man, can escape perdition and regain salvation! And yet, you hesitate!

In order to explain to you what absolution is, I will say it is a verdict which the priest, authorized by Jesus Christ, pronounces in His name, whereby our sins are remitted, are wiped out as completely as if we had never committed them, provided the penitent receives absolution with the proper dispositions demanded by this Sacrament. Who can help but admire this merciful verdict? O happy moment for the contrite sinner! Our poor soul, delivered from the tyranny of the evil spirit, restored to the friendship and grace of God, recovers peace, that precious peace which constitutes man’s whole happiness in this world and the next. His innocence is restored to him with all its claims upon the kingdom of God, of which sin had deprived him. But, remember, this grace is only given to those who deserve it; that is to say, to those who, although sinners, are converted sinners; those who are sorrowfully repentant for their past lives, not only because they had lost heaven, but because they had offended grievously Him who deserved to be loved infinitely.

There are sometimes reasons which may induce the priest to postpone absolution. The church herself has given laws, which the priest is unable to set aside. The priest’s duty is to apply these laws in the right way, and it is your duty, not to murmur or complain if he finds it necessary to refuse or postpone absolution. If a priest refuses it to you, it is because he has your real interest at heart, and an ardent desire to save your soul, and you will comprehend this rightly at the day of judgment: You will then perceive that it was his most fervent wish to lead you to heaven, which induced him to postpone the absolution. Had he given it to you as you wished, he would have been damned. You ought therefore, dear brethren, never to murmur when a priest does not give you absolution; on the contrary, you ought to thank God, and do everything in your power to deserve this grace.

 

II.Among the reasons which oblige the priest sometimes to refuse or postpone absolution are, for instance, insufficient preparation, absence of true contrition, refusal to make restitution, etc. But there is another reason which I will make the chief object of our meditation to-day, and that is a neglect of the Christian to inform himself of the essential truths of his Holy Religion.

St. Charles Borromeo tells us explicitly that “absolution cannot be given to persons who do not know the principal facts of the Christian Religion, and the duties of their state of life; particularly when their ignorance arises from their indifference concerning their salvation.” The laws of the Church in this connection also forbid absolution to be given to fathers or mothers who do not teach their children, or have them taught, in everything that is necessary for their salvation.

What, then, are the essentials of our holy Religion? Listen and I will tell you what every Catholic must necessarily know.

A Christian should know the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Confiteor, the three acts of Faith, Hope and Charity, the commandments of God and the Church and an act of contrition. By this, I do not mean that you must know the words only, but you must be able to give an explanation of each article in particular and say what they mean. This is what is expected of you and not simply to know the words. You must know that the Our Father was composed by God Himself; that the Hail Mary was composed partly by the angel who came to announce the Mystery of the Incarnation to the Blessed Virgin, and partly by the Church; you must know that the creed was composed by the apostles after the descent of the Holy Ghost, before they went out into the world; so that since the first beginning, the same Religion and the same Mysteries are taught in all parts of the world. The creed contains the sum and substance of our entire Holy Religion, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, which is one God in three Persons, namely, God the Father, who created us, God the Son who redeemed us by His death and passion, and God the Holy Ghost, who sanctified us in Baptism. When you say: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator, etc., you must mean, I believe, that the eternal Father created everything, our bodies and our souls, that the world was not always in existence, that it will not always be, that it will one day be destroyed. I believe in Jesus Christ, means: I believe that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, became man, that He suffered and died to redeem us, to merit heaven for us, of which we were deprived by the sin of Adam. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, means: I believe that there is one Church, which is the one that Jesus Christ Himself founded, that in her He has deposited all His graces, and that this Church will endure until the end of the world. When you say: I believe in the Communion of Saints, you must mean: I believe that all Christians take part in one another’s prayers and good works, I believe that the Saints, who are in heaven, pray to God for us, and that we can pray for those who are in purgatory. When you say: I believe in the forgiveness, you mean, I believe that in the Church of Jesus Christ there are Sacraments which remit all sin, and that there are no sins which the Church of Jesus Christ cannot remit. If we say: The resurrection of the body, that means that the very same bodies which we now have, will one day rise again, that our souls will return to them to accompany them to heaven, or to hell, as we shall have deserved. When we say, I believe in the life everlasting, that means: I believe that the next life will have no end, that our souls will last as long as God Himself, who is without end. When you say, from whence He shall come to judge both the living and the dead, means, I believe, that Jesus Christ is in heaven, body and soul, and that He Himself will come to judge us, and to reward those who have been good, and to punish those who have been bad.

We must know, furthermore, that the Commandments of God were given to Adam at his creation; that is to say, that God wrote them in his heart, and that afterwards, God gave them to Moses written upon tablets of stone, upon Mount Sinai. They are the same which our Lord renewed when He came down upon earth to save us. I say that you must know the acts of Faith, Hope and Charity. I repeat, not the words only, but the meaning of them. Faith enables us to believe all that the Church teaches. Although we may not be able to comprehend some of the mysteries, it teaches us to believe that God sees us, and that He watches over us; that He will either reward or punish us according to our acts of good or evil; that there is a heaven for the good, and a hell for the wicked; that our Lord suffered and died for us. Hope teaches us to do all our actions with the intention of pleasing God, and that they will be rewarded through all eternity. In this world the Love of God consists in our loving God above all created things, and preferring Him above all things, even our own life.

This, my dear brethren, is what is meant when we say that you must know the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Confiteor, the one only God, and your three acts. If you do not know this, then you know nothing that is necessary for you to be saved; you should be able when you are asked about these things to explain them: But this is not all: you should also know what the mystery of the Incarnation is, and what the word Incarnation means. You must know that this Mystery means, that the second Person of the Blessed Trinity took upon Himself a body like ours, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the operation of the Holy Ghost. We celebrate this mystery upon the 25th of March, the feast of the Annunciation; for on this day the Son of God united His divinity with our humanity; He took a body like ours, but without sin, and He took all our sins upon Himself, to satisfy His Father’s justice. You must know that Jesus Christ died, that He died as man, and not as God, because as God He could not die;—that He rose again upon Easter day, when He united His soul again to His body, and that after remaining upon earth for forty days, He ascended into Heaven upon Ascension day. That the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost. You should be able to tell the Sacraments. If you are asked by whom they were instituted you must answer that they could only be instituted by Jesus Christ, not by the Blessed Virgin or the Apostles. You should know what are the effects of each Sacrament, and what is the disposition which we must have to receive them properly; you should know that Baptism wipes out original sin, which was the sin of Adam, and which we all have when we come into the world; that the Sacrament of Confirmation is conferred upon us by the Bishop, and that by it we receive the Holy Ghost with the abundance of His graces; that we partake of the Sacrament of Penance when we confess our sins to the priest, and that if we confess them properly, all our sins are effaced by the absolution of the priest. In the Holy Eucharist we believe that there is really and truly present the adorable body and the most precious blood of Jesus Christ. The Sacrament of Extreme Unction helps us to die well, and it was instituted to cleanse us from the sins which we have committed by all the different senses. Holy Orders confer upon man the power which Jesus Christ gave to His Apostles. The Sacrament of Matrimony sanctifies the union of husband and wife if they are united according to the laws of the Church.

Now, my dear brethren, if I had asked you about these things, would you have been able to answer all these questions rightly? Yet, they must be known to every Christian, at least in general. Now, if a priest postpone absolution, because you do not know the principal truths of Holy Religion, is he to be blamed or you? From this you may conclude how necessary it is to be instructed in Holy Religion, what care you should take to learn so as to be enabled to participate in its benefits.

And one of these great benefits, indeed, one of the greatest, is the Absolution, given by the priest to the penitent, by the power of Our Lord Himself. I will not conclude my words without an earnest warning to parents not to neglect the instruction of their children in our Holy Religion, so that on judgment day the parents may not be called to task, if the children have been refused absolution because they did not know their Religion. Amen.