THE DAY OF PARDON: MEANING, BACKGROUND, RITES

VATICAN CITY, MAR 12, 2000 (VIS) - The Office of the Liturgical Ceremonies of the Supreme Pontiff prepares every aspect of a papal liturgy, from vestments to sacred vessels, from concelebrants to the prayers and songs used in a particular liturgy. It also prepares the missalettes which are distributed to the faithful who participate in every papal liturgical celebration.

The booklet for today's Mass to mark the Day of Pardon explains the meaning, background and typical elements of this particular Jubilee Year celebration.

It points out that this Day of Pardon, in which Pope John Paul asks "forgiveness from the Lord for the sins, past and present, of the sons and daughters of the Church, ... was expressly desired by the Holy Father as a powerful sign of this Jubilee Year, which is by its very nature a moment of conversion."

"Certainly," says the explanatory note, "Christians as pilgrims and wayfarers towards the Kingdom, remain sinners, frail and weak and subject to the temptations of Satan, the Prince of this world, despite their incorporation into the Body of Christ. In every generation the holiness of the Church has shone forth, witnessed by countless numbers of her sons and daughters; yet this holiness has been contradicted by the continuing presence of sin which burdens the journey of God's People."

It quotes Pope John Paul's "Tertio Millennio Adveniente": "The Church cannot cross the threshold of the new millennium without encouraging her children to purify themselves through repentance of past errors and instances of infidelity, inconsistency and slowness to act. ... Pope John Paul II, in a primatial act, confesses the sins of Christians over the centuries down to our own time, conscious that the Church is a unique subject in history, 'a single mystical person'."

"The liturgy ... concretizes the request for forgiveness and ... inaugurates a journey of conversion and change vis-a-vis the past."

The Presentation then lists the "admissions of sin already made by both Pope Paul VI and by Pope John Paul II" regarding sin in general, sins against unity, against the people of Israel, sins committed in actions against love, peace and the rights of peoples, sins against the dignity of women and the unity of the human race.

"One thing must be forcibly stated," says the Presentation. "The confession of sins made by the Pope is addressed to God, Who alone can forgive sins, but it is also made before men, from whom the responsibilities of Christians cannot be hidden."

The booklet then explains the typical elements of this celebration: the presence of the Crucifix behind the Altar of the Confession (a 15th century Crucifix from the Church of St. Marcello in Rome's Via del Corso); the "statio" of the Holy Father and cardinal concelebrants before Michelangelo's statue, "The Pieta," at the basilica's entrance; the penitential procession towards the altar during which the Litany of the Saints is sung; after the homily and during the Prayer of the Faithful, the Holy Father makes the act of confession of sins and the request for pardon; at the end of the celebration and the apostolic blessing, "the Holy Father asks that the purification of memory and the request for forgiveness be translated into a commitment of renewed fidelity to the Gospel on the part of the Church and of each of her members."

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