Penance Is a Communal Affair
23rd Sunday of the Year
Let’s imagine it’s sometime in the 5th century, and you or I have committed a sin that was both public and serious. Think one of the big ones against the 1st, 5th, or 6th Commandments: apostasy, murder, adultery—something of that sort. If we hadn’t been baptized, we’d be in luck, as baptism would simply take away our guilt and allow us to begin fresh; but if baptism had already saved us from our sins once, it couldn’t do it again, and so we’d be in need of a “second plank” to pull us out of the water and back into the boat. Of course, we all know this would be the sacrament of penance; but it wouldn’t be so easy as checking bulletin at our local parish to see when confessions are being heard. No, our path back into the Church would be far more complicated and demanding. We would have to enter what was called the “Order of Penitence” and undergo a process of public purification and penance before being able to rejoin the worshiping community and receive the Holy Eucharist again. In this process, which could take months or years, we would be allowed gradually further into the church during the celebration of the liturgy; and all the while the community would be fervently praying for us as we advance in our conversion. But only on Holy Thursday would the bishop lay hands on us, grant us absolution, and welcome us back into full communion with the Church.
Penance in the early Church, from the 2nd until the 6th century, was an entirely public sacrament. The community knew the penitents, and their sin; they prayed for their healing, and rejoiced when communion with them had been restored. The sacrament gradually developed into the form we have today, in which we confess our sins privately and individually to the priest, and while it would be correct to say that the Church understands and practices this sacrament better now than before, there was an aspect of the sacrament that was more clearly emphasized in the past, one which we have perhaps forgotten: its communal, or social, nature.
At its core, penance is not an individual matter, because sin is not an individual matter. We often say that sin damages our relationship with God, but this is only one-half of the picture. Sin also damages our relationships with the Church—that is, with each other. The original form of the sacrament understood that for true reconciliation to take place, both God and the Church must be actively involved, the latter not only in granting absolution, but in accompanying the penitent along their path of conversion and healing: praying for them, fasting for them, suffering for them, and rejoicing with them at their return.
If we take today’s Gospel as part of Christ’s institution of the sacrament of penance, we can see the role of the Church in the methodology of reconciliation the Lord describes. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you.” “If he refuses… tell the church.” While Christ is not speaking here directly of the sacrament of penance as such, that he places the beginnings of reconciliation as taking place at the level of individual relationship indicates that we cannot simply punt the task of penance to the Church. Christ did not say, “If your brother sins against you, tell him to go to confession.” Rather, Christ said, “If your brother sins against you, go to him.” He wants us to enter into the process of the sinner’s transformation in grace and, in fact, be an integral part of it.
Becoming part of and really participating in the Church’s work of reconciliation is possible on account of the Mystical Body of Christ. As members of Christ’s Body, we enjoy a kind of transitive property among ourselves, in which our hopes and joys, sufferings and trials, can be shared and received across time and space with each other. Prayers and penances offered can be applied to anyone and to everyone, regardless of their geographical or temporal vicinity to us. We can, for example, still pray for the conversion of Saint Augustine, which took place in the year 386, and these prayers would not be in vain but, in fact efficacious, because of our being together with him in the one Body of Christ, in whom the dividing walls of history have been torn down.
In practice, this means that the prayers, charitable works, acts of penance, and sufferings we undertake and endure can—and should!—be used to benefit sinners in the Body of Christ—which is us all. There is nothing we can do or experience without meaning or value when it is folded into Christ with faith in him and charity toward our brothers and sisters. The saints looked upon afflictions in their life not as attacks made upon them personally but as opportunities to benefit the whole of the Church communally. It is our Christian duty not to deprive our brothers and sisters of the good that can come from what we offer; and, to put it the other way around, who among us could not stand to benefit from what the Church around us offers in our favor?
Sharing in the act of reconciling our brothers and sisters with God and the Church, however, takes place at a deeper, more mystical level, beyond the kind of transactional exchange of prayers and penances I’ve just described. And this is the real heart of the matter. The contours of Christian existence are always identical to the contours of the life of Christ. Christ took on flesh. He assumed the fullness of the human condition. He experienced the painful agony of sin and its effects without ever sinning himself. As Saint Paul says, he “became sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). His sympathy with us in our condition lead him to the height of the Cross and to the depths of hell, all the while experiencing in himself the separation sin causes us from God and from each other. And he calls his Church to follow where he has gone before. Sharing in Christ’s ministry of reconciling sinners with the Father means making that journey with him, so that by experiencing the pain of the Cross in ourselves, we offer ourselves along with him. We complete his sufferings by embracing them in ourselves as part of his Body, and the sacrifice we offer in him is thus made efficacious for the salvation of the world.
Though we do not have the public means of reconciliation we once did, we have no shortage of public sinners—those who we know are most in need of God’s mercy. Saint Paul tells us that to them and to all our brothers and sisters we owe a debt of love. Love at its deepest level means uniting oneself to another, entering into their existence, and taking their experience in its entirety into our own. What will matter on the last day, when we are judged, is not only that we lived in a state of grace, but that we lived in a state of love. It is our Christian duty to love; and if we will not love on earth, then we cannot expect to be loved in heaven.
In the prayer of absolution, the priest prays for the penitent to receive pardon and peace “through the ministry of the Church.” Today’s Gospel invites us to consider the full meaning of that ministry, that it includes you and me, and that it demands the full weight of our love.
Homily preached September 10, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. A version of this homily was also preached September 9 at St. Thomas Aquinas, Hampden.