"Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you retain are retained."
Summary of Fr. Gerry Creedon's homily, April 19,
2009
"Let the house of Israel say, his mercy endures for ever.” Ps 118:2.
My father and a few of his pals loved to go to Lough Derg on pilgrimage. The island where they would spend three long days and sleepless nights was called St Patrick's Purgatory. To fortify themselves for a time of fast and abstinence, when they would drink tea without milk and sugar, they had more than a few drinks on the long journey from Cork to Donegal. A high point of the retreat was confession with the Monsignor, who was noted for his severity. My father tells, "The Monsignor asked me to pledge never to take another drink. When I decided to be honest and replied that I could not say that, he threw me out of the box, un absolved." The next person in line was Danny Pheig. Seeing the treatment meted out to my God-fearing father, he decided to play safe. "Father, I have no sin to confess and just came for the grace of the sacrament." This threw the Monsignor into a terrible fury. His bellow was heard throughout the whole basilica, "The perfect man! The one I have been waiting for all these years! Do you have the gall to think you are the Immaculate Conception herself? For your grave sin of pride say three rosaries!"
In an earlier church era priests were trained in manual moral theology as if they were legislators whose role was to make the punishment fit the crime, judging the correct penance for the gravity of the sin. We were the enforcers of the code. With the renewal of Vatican II the priest is called to a change in role. In the sacrament of reconciliation we are asked to be shepherds or counselors. Justice is to be tempered and trumped by mercy.
The second Sunday of Easter has been entitled Mercy Sunday. The promotion of a devotion to Divina Misericordia, fomented by Sr. Faustina and Pope John Paul, has been taken up eagerly by Latino and Filipino communities, as well as other prayer groups. It is a focus that should not be sidelined by Catholics as some kind of fringe or optional activity. Pope John Paul himself in his approach to his would be assassin gave a singular witness to restorative justice. He wanted to counter the punitive streak in society and in traditional Catholicism with a renewed emphasis on the mercy of the Lord. The peace proclamations of the Risen Lord are impossible without mercy and forgiveness. They are the paths to peace.
Society needs this witness. Senator Webb has written recently in his book, "A Time to Fight" and in an article in Parade, March 29, 2009, about the plight of prisoners in the USA. America imprisons 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly 5 times the world's average. About one in every 31 adults in this country is in jail or on supervised release. "Either we are the most evil people on earth or we are doing something very wrong...Our overcrowded, ill-managed prison systems are places of violence, physical abuse, and hate, making them breeding grounds that perpetuate and magnify the same types of behavior we purport to fear." I have read that the most significant indicator that you may be bound for prison is whether you have been there before.
The Risen Christ proclaims; "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you retain are retained." This message is intended not only for confessors but also for all believers. Believers in turn are called to be a leaven of mercy in a merciless society. May our lives reflect this Sunday's opening prayer, "God of mercy, you wash away our sins in water, you give us new birth in the Spirit, and redeem us in the blood of Christ.” May we always stand for second chances and redemption within our church and in our world.
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
Merchant of Venice
