TO PRIESTS: REDISCOVER THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE

VATICAN CITY, APR 2, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was the Letter of The Holy Father Pope John Paul II to Priests for Holy Thursday, 2001, in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Polish.

The Pope begins the Letter by thanking each one of the priests for all that they did during the Jubilee Year "to ensure that the people entrusted to your care might experience more intensely the saving presence of the Risen Lord."

"Chosen to proclaim Christ," he affirms, "we are first of all invited to live in intimacy with him: we cannot give to others what we ourselves do not have! There is a thirst for Christ which, despite many appearances to the contrary, emerges even in contemporary society. ... This thirst for Christ ' whether conscious or not ' cannot be quenched with empty words. Only authentic witnesses can communicate in a credible way the word that saves."

The Holy Father emphasizes that in Rome "one of the most visible manifestations of the Jubilee was certainly the exceptional numbers of people receiving the Sacrament of mercy. Even non-religious observers were impressed by this."

He recalls that "in recent decades this Sacrament has passed through a certain crisis, for a number of reasons. Precisely in order to tackle this crisis, in 1984 a Synod was held, the conclusions of which were presented in the Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation 'Reconciliatio et paenitentia'." He then says: "It would be naive to think that the mere intensifying of the practice of the Sacrament of forgiveness during the Jubilee Year is proof of a definitive turnabout. It was nevertheless an encouraging sign."

The Pope goes on to say that Holy Thursday, "the special day of our vocation, calls us to reflect above all on 'who we are', and in particular on our journey to holiness. ... It is important, on this day of love par excellence, that we should feel the grace of the priesthood as a super-abundance of mercy."

"Let us then rediscover our vocation as a 'mystery of mercy'. In the Gospel we find that Peter receives his special ministry with precisely this spiritual attitude. ... And is it not within an experience of mercy that Paul's vocation too is born? No one experienced the gratuitousness of Christ's choice as vividly as he did."

John Paul II underscores the need to "rediscover the Sacrament of Reconciliation as a fundamental means of our sanctification. ... On this holy day, therefore, let us ask Christ to help us to rediscover, for ourselves, the full beauty of this Sacrament."

"Dear priests, let us make regular use of this Sacrament, that the Lord may constantly purify our hearts and make us less unworthy of the mysteries which we celebrate. ... The Sacrament of Reconciliation, essential for every Christian life, is especially a source of support, guidance and healing for the priestly life."

"The crisis of the Sacrament of Reconciliation ... is due to many factors from the diminished sense of sin to an inadequate realization of the sacramental economy of God's salvation. But perhaps we should also recognize that another factor sometimes working against the Sacrament has been a certain dwindling of our own enthusiasm and availability for the exercise of this delicate and demanding ministry.

"Conversely, now more than ever the People of God must be helped to rediscover the Sacrament. We need to declare with firmness and conviction that the Sacrament of Penance is the ordinary means of obtaining pardon and the remission of grave sins committed after Baptism. We ought to celebrate the Sacrament in the best possible way, according to the forms laid down by liturgical law, so that it may lose none of its character as the celebration of God's mercy."

The Holy Father affirms that a "source of renewed confidence in the revival of this Sacrament is not only the fact that, despite many incongruities, a new and urgent need for spirituality is becoming widespread in society. There is also a deeply-felt need for interpersonal contact, which is increasingly experienced as a reaction to the anonymous mass society which often leaves people interiorly isolated, even when it involves them in a flurry of purely functional relationships. Obviously sacramental confession is not to be confused with a support system or with psychotherapy."

The priest's ability "to be welcoming, to be a good listener and to engage in dialogue, together with his ready accessibility, is essential if the ministry of reconciliation is to be seen in all its value. ... The liturgical form of the Sacrament also needs to be given due attention. The Sacrament forms part of the structure of communion which is the mark of the Church."
"It is extremely important to help people recover this 'community' aspect of the Sacrament, also by means of community penance services which conclude with individual confession and absolution. This manner of celebration enables the faithful to appreciate better the two-fold dimension of reconciliation, and commits them more effectively to following the penitential path in all its revitalizing richness."

In concluding, the Holy Father refers to "the fundamental problem of catechetical teaching about the moral conscience and about sin, so that people can have a clearer idea of the radical demands of the Gospel. ... Evangelization in the third millennium must come to grips with the urgent need for a presentation of the Gospel message which is dynamic, complete and demanding."

After recalling that last year he wrote this annual Letter from the Cenacle "during my visit to the Holy Land," the Holy Father concludes: "How can I forget that touching moment? I re-live it today, not without sorrow for the tragic situation which persists in the land of Christ."

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