Pope John Paul II on the Sacrament of Reconciliation

General Audience, 22nd February 1984

Often, in the experience of the faithful, it is precisely the obligation to present themselves before the minister of mercy which constitutes a particular difficulty for them. Why, they object, reveal to a man like myself my most intimate circumstances and also my most secret faults? Why, they also object, can I not address God or Christ directly instead of going through the mediation of a man in order to receive the forgiveness of sins?

These and similar questions can seem quite plausible because of the effort which the Sacrament of Penance always asks of us… It is true: the man who absolves is a brother who must also confess in his turn, since, despite his obligation to grow in personal holiness, he remains subject to the limitations of human frailty. The man who absolves, however, does not offer the forgiveness of sins in the name of his own holiness… When he raises his hand in blessing and pronounces the words of absolution, he acts ‘in persona Christi’ – in the person of Christ – not simply as Christ’s representative, but also and above all as a human instrument in which the Lord Jesus – God-with-us - is present and acts.


Homily during Mass at the Phoenix Park, Dublin, September 29th, 1979

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are all invited to meet Christ personally and to do so frequently. This encounter with Jesus is so very important that I wrote in my first Encyclical Letter these words: "In faithfully observing the centuries-old practice of the Sacrament of Penance - the practice of individual confession with a personal act of sorrow and the intention to amend and make satisfaction - the Church is therefore defending the human soul's individual right : man's right to a more personal encounter with the crucified forgiving Christ, with Christ saying, through the minister of the sacrament of Reconciliation : 'Your sins are forgiven' ; 'Go, and do not sin again'". Because of Christ's love and mercy, there is no sin that is too great to be forgiven; there is no sinner who will be rejected. Every person who repents will be received by Jesus Christ with forgiveness and immense love.


Homily, 16th March 1980

The confession boxes of the world in which people bring their sins to light do not proclaim the severity of God, but above all they speak of his merciful goodness. And those who approach the confessional, sometimes after many years and with the weight of serious sins, find the longed-for relief when they go from there; they find the joy and serenity of conscience, which they can find nowhere else but in confession. No-one but God has the power to free us from our sins. And the man who receives such a remission of sin, receives the grace of a new life of the Spirit, which God alone can give him from his infinite goodness.

The Way of the Cross - 9th Station

Jesus Falls The Third Time


Isaiah 53: 4-6
Ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God; whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises. We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and the Lord brought the acts of rebellion of all of us to bear on him.

Psalm 38: 4
My sins stand higher than my head, they weigh on me as an unbearable weight.


Many of the onlookers must have thought him dead at this point. There is a gasp from the crowd, but this most pitiful state does not persuade his torturers to go any easier on him. Mercilessly they give vent to their frustration that he has once again fallen. More blows rain down on him, weakening him even further. He struggles to his feet and with one last burst of strength he takes the cross upon his shoulders again. He has given more than any man could possibly give, but he desires that his efforts should reach the maximum possible gift of self. He is filled with his divine zeal to accomplish this supreme gift of self, but the weakness of his human body will not respond as vigorously as he would desire it to. His body is bent under the sheer weight of the cross. By now it seems to be a thousand times heavier than when he first laid his hands to it. His steps are slow and laborious, but each step is made. One after another, step by step, merciful love unfolds itself over poor sinful humanity. For those onlookers the effects of exhaustion might look like reluctance. If they only knew the truth – that he would run to Calvary gladly had he the physical strength to match his desire.

Lord Jesus, help us to have high ideals and aspirations in our lives. Plant in our souls a great zeal for holiness, a great desire to fulfil your will to the best of our ability. But give us the faith and trust not to be discouraged or become frustrated at our weakness which causes us to fall and prevents us from becoming all that your will calls us to be. Rather let these be moments in which we come to know that we are completely dependent upon you who said: Apart from me you can do nothing. “Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).

The Way of the Cross - 8th Station

Jesus Meets The Women Of Jerusalem

Luke 23: 28-31
Jesus turning to them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us'. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"


On his journey to Calvary Jesus meets some of the holy women of Jerusalem. These were not those who accompanied him from Galilee, but were women who had probably heard him teach or who had benefited from his miraculous actions. They are weeping for him and it seems that they are doing the right thing. And it is surprising that Jesus responds to them in the way that he does. Do not weep for me, weep for yourselves and your children.

Do not weep for me, as you would a victim who is swept along by the evil that is in the world, for I have the power to lay down my life and the power to take it up again. I lay down my life freely, I am a willing victim. I am in control in all this despite what might appear to you. Do not weep for me, I suffer because I want to so that I might free you from evil.

Weep rather for yourselves. To weep for me in my suffering, to have compassion on me and console me in this terrible suffering is a good thing, but it gives me more consolation that you should weep over your own sins which have caused me this great suffering and distress.

I am the green wood, pure and innocent, full of the life of God. And this is the great suffering I undergo, the fire of God’s justice devours me. How will dry wood, that is a soul dried because of its sin, stand up to that devouring flame, unless it repent and be grafted onto the green wood and be brought back to life.

Lord help us to have a better awareness of our sins and the confidence to cast them into the furnace of your loving mercy. Give us a greater capacity to repent and weep for our sins. As we accompany you along this way of misery, may we acknowledge our sins, repent of them and give thanks for your willingness to undergo such bitter trials to take those sins away.

The Way of the Cross - 7th Station

Jesus Falls The Second Time

2Cor 4:16-17
That is why we do not waver; indeed though this outer human nature of ours may be falling into decay, at the same time our inner human nature is renewed day by day. The temporary light burden of our hardships is earning us forever an utterly incomparable, eternal weight of glory.

This second fall of Jesus is more severe on him than the first. By now he is too exhausted to put up much resistance to the crushing weight of the cross and the constant tugging of the soldiers has probably contributed to this fall. The soldiers are mercilessly leading him forward, for they are in a hurry to accomplish the plans of evil. The Lord does not, however, languish in the dust. As quickly as his strength will allow him he rises once again and takes up again the burden of the cross, for though his executioners are in a hurry to carry out his death, he is in an even greater hurry to offer his life, eager that the salvation he came to bring should not be delayed by even a second. As his human strength diminishes, his sheer determination to accomplish the will of the Father gives him renewed power to go on. Resolutely he moves forward, onward towards Calvary.

Lord Jesus, help us not to waver in the resolutions and promises we have made to you. Keep us from the temptation to turn back, to renounce the decisions we have made to follow your will. When we are weak and the path ahead seems beyond our strength; when your will seems to ask more than we are able or willing to give, give us a renewed sense of purpose and a renewed zeal for your call, wherever it may be leading us.

On the Redemptive Power of Jesus Christ

More great stuff from the writings of Blessed Columba Marmion; this time on the saving power of Christ:

Sin is an insult given to God, an insult that has to be expiated. Man, being simply a creature, is by himself incapable of paying off properly the debt contracted against the Divine Majesty by an offence, the malice of which is infinite. A satisfaction, to be adequate, must be offered by someone of the same dignity as the one offended. The gravity of an insult is in proportion to the dignity of the one offended; the same insult given to a prince is more serious because of his rank than if it had been given to a peasant***… Now, between us and God there is an infinite gap… You know what God’s answer has been… He decreed that the ransom of humanity would only be brought about by the satisfaction equal to the rights of his infinite justice, and that this satisfaction would be given by the bloody sacrifice of a victim who would substitute himself freely, voluntarily, for sinful mankind. Who would this Saviour be?...

… God sent the promised Saviour, the Saviour who was to ransom creation, destroy sin and reconcile mankind with God. Who was it who would come? It was the Son of God made man… This solution is a wonderful one. ‘The humanity of Christ,’ says St. Gregory, ‘permitted him to die and to satisfy for men; his divinity gave him the power to restore us to the grace that sanctifies.’ Death had come from a human nature soiled by sin. From a human nature united to one who is God, would spring forth the source of grace and of life.

***‘Sin committed against God has an infinite quality because of the infinity of the Divine Majesty, for an offence is greater to the extent that the one transgressed against is greater’. St. Thomas Aquinas – ST III, q.1

On being a son of God

At the minute I am reading the wonderful theological and spiritual classic by Blessed Columba Marmion: Christ, the Life of the Soul. Marmion could be described as one who strongly promotes and emphasises the fact that we are adopted sons and daughters of God in and through the only Son of God – Jesus Christ. His writings are full of great spiritual gems. Below you will find some of them. I will add more as I find them.

By nature, God has only one Son. By love, He will have a multitude of them, without number. This is the grace of supernatural adoption.

The Father pre-destined us to be adopted… through Jesus Christ (cf. Ephesians 1:5). We are sons, like Jesus – we by title of grace, He by nature. He is Son, and we are sons: He, the Father’s own Son, and we, adopted sons. But He saves, while we are saved.

Christ is not only holy in Himself, He is our holiness. All the holiness that God has destined for souls has been deposited in the humanity of Christ, and this is the source from which we must draw.

God has chosen me – chosen us – to be raised infinitely above my natural condition, to enjoy eternally His own beatitude, to be the realisation of one of His Divine thoughts, to be one voice in the concert of the elect, to be one of those brethren who are like Jesus, and who share, without end, His celestial inheritance.

Every one of the elect is the fruit of the blood of Jesus and of the wonderful operations of His grace.

We shall be pleasing to the Eternal Father – and is not the very basis of holiness to be pleasing to God? – only if He recognises in us the features of His Son. Through grace and our virtues, we ought to be so identified with Christ, that the Father, gazing on our souls, may recognise us as His true children, may take pleasure in that, as He did in contemplating Christ Jesus on earth.

A Rant on 'Children's Liturgies'

About a year ago I was asked at short notice to cover the Sunday Mass in a certain parish. (Being a smaller parish there was only one Mass) I duly obliged and arrived in good time to prepare the Mass - not knowing what the set up was at that parish. As soon as I arrived I was told by the sacristan that the Mass had a children's liturgy dimension incorporated into it. Immediately my heresy/litrugical abuse radar switched on and began to imagine what such children's 'participation' might entail.

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Cautiously I enquired as to what format this participation would take - only to be told that at the beginning of Mass the children would leave the Church and go to an adjoining room for some catechetical activity with a number of adults. I was suitably not impressed. I thought to myself: "How unlucky that I should have to cover this parish on this particular Sunday'. Further enquiry revealed that this happens every Sunday.

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So as I walked out on the Sanctuary and spoke the opening greeting. Then - 'extra omnes' under 8 years - and the Mass continued. I waited for the children's return - but to no avail. I thought after the homily surely - no! Maybe at the offertory they would come bearing gifts - no! Surely in time for the Consecration - but no, still no sign of these to whom the Kingdom is promised. Finally just after the purification of the Sacred Vessels and just before the Concluding Prayer of the Mass - a small crowd of children began to gather at the back of the Church - holding in thier hands various little drawings. And so the procession began and I was presented with a blaze of colouring amidst the smiling admiration of so many contented parents. And what must have appeared to be a broad smile on my face was actually gritted teeth!

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Every Sunday these children are extracted from the public worship of the Church to do catechesis. Now catechesis is a wonderful thing - indispensible - but these children don't get to attend Mass. As for the adults who give of their time for this catechesis - well that is to be commended, and one hopes that they attend another Mass, because they certainly haven't attended this one.

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As you may guess by now - I am not a fan of 'children's liturgies'. While I have no problem adapting the Mass suitably to a lower level of comprehension for the children (though I avoid the Eucharistic Prayers for Children like the plague) by addressing them in the homily and acknowledging their presence and activity (catechetical work and art done outside of the Mass), I am a firm believer in giving the children a lived experience of liturgy in the family of the Church - something which children's liturgies sacrifice for the sake of ???? (I'm not sure of the purpose actually - babysitting??).

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And when those children reach the age of 9 or 10 or 13 and it's no longer 'cool' to colour some pictures of Jesus the Good Shepherd, will they have an experience of the Mass which will keep them interested, engaged and present. Will they have been given the chance to participate in the Holy Sacrifice fully, consciously, and actively in the truest meaning of that term - i.e. by prayerful engagement with the Sacred Liturgy as best as a child can do that. If Mass is presented to them as something fun and entertaining for so many years and they don't actually get to experience it properly - what happens when they reach an age when it's no longer fun, no longer entertaining? What will hold them then?

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I left that Parish that morning with the words of Our Saviour ringing in my ears: "Let the little children come to me." How sad that in too many parishes they are kept at bay during one of the most priviledged and profound encounters with Christ any of us can have this side of the grave.

End of Rant