(The following is a pastoral letter from Archbishop Thomas Donnellan in conjunction with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

Our Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, has invited the entire Church to prepare for the 1975 Holy Year, which will mark the tenth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. The Council had desired a profound renewal of spirit, structures, and pastoral organization of the Church for the salvation of the world.

The central theme of the Holy Year will be reconciliation at all levels – reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ and reconciliation among mankind; reconciliation within the Catholic Church herself and in her relationship with the other Churches; reconciliation in society among people of every class, race, nation, and degree of economic, social, and cultural development.

The Holy Year will concentrate upon the profound and total transformation of the whole man, in all his feelings, judgments, and acts, so that this interior reform of hearts may lead all people to reflect on the basic values of life and invite all men to faith in Christ.

The Church celebrates and achieves interior reform and renewal in a very special way through the sacrament of penance and reconciliation, yet in the past few years there has been an undeniable decline in the use of this sacrament. Some have lost a sense of sin and its ugliness because man’s accomplishments blind them to the importance of God. Naïve optimism, inadequate psychology and conflicting opinions have lead to confused and deadened consciences and a conviction that all that matters is a good intention. Some have become insensitive to the dimensions of sin – and others have been overwhelmed by them, feeling powerless to change sins which have become a national way of life: prejudice, poverty, violence.

The Holy Year offers an occasion for reaffirming our conviction of the presence of sin in persons and society, ourselves included, of the need for a change of heart to reconcile men to God an to one another, and of the importance and value of the sacrament of reconciliation in modern life. Through the centuries the Church has modified the structures of penance to meet the changing needs of different persons and cultures. What has remained ever constant is need to be sorry, to confess sins externally, and to receive the sign of forgiveness through the Church.

The Holy See shares this concern. The recent Declaration on First Confession is intended to protect the rights of children to receive this sign of God’s mercy and love as soon as they need to do so. The latest decree “Ordo Penitentiae” reaffirms that individual and integral confession remains the normal, ordinary way for Christian to be reconciled with God and the Church.

Why is this sacrament of penance and reconciliation so important in Catholic life?

There is another dimension to the sacrament of reconciliation which is often overlooked: the role of the Church as a sign and source of salvation.

It is a form of revelation in which God himself speaks to man. We are often ashamed of our weakness and selfishness, fearful of our inability to change, puzzled as to what we should do. We approach the sacrament prayerfully, opening our hearts in honesty to God. Just as God reassured Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31, 3) so now through the priest, God our Father reassures us of his constant love, which never wavers despite our sins. His interest, concern, tenderness, and mercy give us new hope.

We can begin to see ourselves through God’s eyes and come to a more authentic self-understanding and self-acceptance.

The same Jesus Christ who cured the leper with a touch (Mark 1, 40-42) and forgave sins with a word (Mark 2, 1-12) now uses the priest to heal and forgive, to teach and console, to correct and encourage us.

The same Holy Spirit who revolutionized the lives of the first Christians is present within us, enlightening, strengthening, and healing. The sacrament celebrates – makes visible in a joyous, thankful way – what God is doing is the depths of our heart.

How often people complain that God seems deaf to their prayers, that he never answers, that he has fallen silent! Yet in the sacrament of reconciliation God does speak. He utters a word of holiness and power, of pardon and love. He demands that we change, but he does not leave us to our own meager resources. He tells that he himself will cleanse and purify us, free us from the forces of evil, restore us to spiritual health and vigor, and make us whole. (Jeremiah 30, 17; Ezik. 36, 25-27)

The outward expression of our sorrow for sin, of our faith in God’s presence and mercy, of our hope in his power to change our lives, of our resolution to repair the damage we have done and make a fresh start, of our love for God and for our brothers and sisters – all of this intensifies our interior dispositions.

Our words and gestures flow from the heart but also flow back to reinforce and clarify the love poured into us by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5, 5), a love which is often too deep for words (Ibid., 8, 26). The honest effort to stammer out our deficient self-understanding, relying on God’s infinite desire to pardon us, is itself a means to spiritual progress and to a more profound friendship with God.

In the name of Jesus Christ and in union with him the Church struggles against sin on all levels – personal sins, sinful structures, and the state of sinfulness. The Christian community carries on Christ’s work of awakening consciences to the effects of sin on oneself, on one’s relationship to God, and on others, both individually and corporately. The People of God want to bind up the wounds of division and alienation, to bring peace to individuals and society, to help sinners with prayer, advice, encouragement, and support.

The Church itself has been wounded by the sin of Christians; the health of the body of Christ is affected by the sickness of individual members (I Cor. 2, 12-27); the mission of the Church to bear witness to Christ and to serve the world is hampered by each sinful refusal to love. Nevertheless, by the power of the Holy Spirit the Church continues to love sinners, to pray for them together with the risen Lord, and to forgive them in his name. The prayer of the Church is a prayer of petition for pardon, but also a joyous and authoritative declaration that its prayer is heard. The same Holy Spirit who inspires the sacramental prayer of the Church works within the heart of man to heal the wounds of sin, create new life, and open up new possibilities of Christian growth. Thus the prayer of confession of weakness is changed into a grateful prayer of praise to God who is never engaged in reconciling man to himself.

To intensify the appreciation of the sacrament of penance and to make it more fruitful and effective in the life God’s people, a broad program of renewal is needed: workshops to make to laity and clergy more familiar with the ways of making the sacrament of reconciliation more prayerful, joyous and effective; communal penance services for use in parishes and diocese; homilies on sin and penance, particularly during Advent and Lent.

All of the faithful are asked to help this work of renewal by more frequent and intense prayer, by self-denial, and especially by more fervent reception of the sacrament of God’s mercy. In this task we may all take courage from the words of St. Paul.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old order has passed away; now all is new! All this has been done by God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. I mean that God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s transgressions against them, and that he has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. This makes us ambassadors for Christ, God as it were, appealing through us. We implore you, in Christ’s name: be reconciled to God!” (Corinthians 5: 17-20)