At 2:00 PM this Sunday the 11th, the Catholic Church in our community will hold a Communal Reconciliation Service. Penitence is an essential part of the spirit of Advent as we heed the call of John the Baptism to turn away from sin and prepare to meet the Lord.
Communal reconciliation liturgies are much more than an efficient way to hear lots of confessions, although this practical aspect can’t be discounted. It’s helpful to priests to gather together and assist each other in the ministry of reconciliation. It is helpful to the faithful, who have an opportunity to confess to someone other than their pastor.
Communal services such as this are expressions of our faith that sin is not just something that harms an indiv idual. The worst of sin is that it ruptures relationships, above all our relationship with God and others, even as it harms our own soul. If sin is that which causes such division, then the remedy itself calls for unity. Reconciliation is an act of the Church, the minister in the person of Christ, the penitent who recognizes the harm of sin, and the People of God gathered around the sinner and pray for forgiveness and peace.
In the communal reconciliation service, we take that one line of the Confiteor which we pray at the beginning of Mass—therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God—and expand it into a liturgy where we fulfill this promise to pray for reconciliation and healing.
So often we approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation from a highly individualistic point of view. That is understandable. We know that since the 8th Century, the sacramental rite for the forgiveness of sins has emphasized this by being in the form of auricular confession, private between the priest and the penitent. It wasn’t always so. Public confession, public penance, and public reconciliation was the primary mode of celebrating the sacrament for the many centuries before.
The renewal of the liturgy and the sacraments that was the response to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, while preserving the essential private nature of confession and the particular penance and absolution, brought about a new order of penance that included communal reconciliation services. That which could be celebrated in public with others–proclaiming the Word of God and the call of conversion, the examination of conscience, the expression of contrition, and the expression of praise and gratitude–were key to situating individual reconciliation within the worshiping community.
So important is the communal aspect of penance, that the Church has envisioned Penitential Services without the celebration of individual confession. Like the Ember Days and Rogation Days of old, these services remind us that the work of reconciliation extends way beyond the confessional. Indeed, all the sacraments are intimately connected with reconciliation and healing, remedies for sin and evil. Recall that the mission of the Church is to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth, the Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Perhaps an example from the celebration of another sacrament can demonstrate what communal reconciliation services express about the communal reality of reconciliation. The sacrament of matrimony has two essential components: the exchange of vows by the couple and the consummation of the sacrament in the intimacy of marital relations. While some weddings might be small, private affairs, the vast majority of marriages celebrate the vows in public. And all marriages must have a witness in addition to the officiant. Why are weddings such public and communal affairs when the marriage is such an intimate reality between two people?
We attend weddings to support the couple with our prayers and our presence. We are not participating in the sacrament as they are when they give themselves to each other and become one flesh. And yet, we want to be there because we know that marriage is also a communal value. Society depends on the fundamental fidelity that the couple brings to the creation of family. We know that a married couple can’t make it on their own. They need God, of course. They also need their extended family and their friends, and indeed a whole community of support to have a thriving and healthy marriage. The way we celebrate weddings makes this abundantly clear.
The same dynamic is at work in the celebration of reconciliation. Sin is not just a private act. The effects of sin always extend to the community. Even our most solitary sins affect the good of the community in which we belong, because sin harms our human dignity. Therefore our human relations are compromised by the harm that sin causes our souls.
Even if we are not aware of serious sin within us or admit a need to go to confession, we should attend the parish’s communal reconciliation service because people need our support, our prayers, and our encouragement as they encounter the mercy of God. You can be assured that at a communal reconciliation service, there are people who have a tremendous need to be reconciled. It is a wonderful thing as a confessor, to encounter someone on what might seem like just an ordinary Sunday in Advent, and they are having the conversion experience of a lifetime.
Many people express their difficulty in being witnesses to the faith. They aren’t sure how to share their faith at work or in public. We want to lead others to Christ, but aren’t quite sure how. The liturgies of the Church, especially the public celebration of the Sacraments, host the crowd of witnesses who are gathered around the Lord Jesus publicly professing their faith. The primary grace you encounter in a communal reconciliation service might not be through your own sacramental absolution. It might be the grace you give to someone else by your own presence as a witness to reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
One of the steps to reconciliation is true contrition for our sins. We are to be moved to sorrow and sadness at our sin and the sins of others. This emotional component of reconciliation is difficult. Much of the time our own shame at admitting our sins blocks us from the more difficult emotions that contrition brings about. We can count on our brothers and sisters present at a communal reconciliation service to help us get beyond our shame and through the difficult and sorrowful truth of the harm our sin does and thus be more open and receptive to the mercy of God.
Think about chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. Christ was confronting the Pharisees who criticized him for dining with sinners. They had closed themselves off from the true joy that comes from reconciliation and healing.
In our communal celebration of reconciliation, we want to share in God’s joy when that which was lost has been found. We have known this joy in our own lives. Let’s all help others experience it too by our own witness to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.