Rediscover Confession, Urges Benedict XVI
Calls It Sacrament of Forgiveness
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 15, 2009 - Sin is what
puts distance between the believer and God, and it's the sacrament of
confession that brings the two back together, says Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this today in a Gospel reflection on Mark's account of the
healed leper, which he delivered before praying the midday Angelus with
those gathered in St. Peter's Square.
In the Gospel account, recalls the Pontiff, the leper "gets on his knees and
says: 'If you wish, you can make me clean!' Jesus, moved, stretches out his
hand, touches him and says: 'I do wish it. Be made clean!'"
"According to the ancient Jewish law," the Holy Father explained, "leprosy
was not only considered a sickness but the gravest form of 'impurity.'"
He continued: "Leprosy thus constituted a kind of religious and civil death,
and its healing was a kind of resurrection. We might see in leprosy a symbol
of sin, which is the true impurity of heart, distancing us from God.
"It is not, in effect, physical malady that distances us from him, as the
ancient norms supposed, but sin, the spiritual and moral evil."
Benedict XVI reflected: "The sins we commit distance us from God, and, if
they are not humbly confessed, trusting in the divine mercy, they will
finally bring about the death of the soul. This miracle thus has powerful
symbolic value.
"In the Sacrament of Penance Christ crucified and risen, through his
ministers, purifies us with his infinite mercy, restores us to communion
with the heavenly Father and our brothers, and makes a gift of his love, joy
and peace to us."
"Dear brothers and sisters," he concluded, "let us invoke the Virgin Mary,
whom God preserved from every stain of sin, that she help us to avoid sin
and to have frequent recourse to the sacrament of confession, the sacrament
of forgiveness, whose value and importance for our Christian life needs to
be rediscovered today."
http://www.zenit.org/article-25099?l=english
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