The "crisis" of the Sacrament of Penance " primarily challenges priests”.In this Year for Priests, Benedict XVI has urged them to "go back to the confessional, even as a place to "spend" more time “so the faithful may find mercy, counsel and comfort, to feel loved and understood by God and experience the presence of Divine Mercy".
This was Pope Benedict’s call addressed today to all priests participants of the course on the internal forum, sponsored by the Apostolic Penitentiary.
Today's society, marked by hedonism and relativism, in some ways resembles the one in which Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars lived, as an example of the life of the priest. But even if today there are no attempts to prevent the same exercise of the ministry than there were after the French Revolution, "we live - said the Pope - in a cultural context marked by a hedonistic and relativistic mentality, which seeks to remove God from the horizon of life, it does not favour the acquirement of a clear framework of values and does not help to discern good from evil and to develop a proper sense of sin. This situation – he added – makes the service of administrators of Divine Mercy even more urgent. We must not forget, in fact, that there is a sort of vicious circle between the blurring of the experience of God and the loss of the sense of sin".
In his day, the Cure of Ars "said 'the church his home', to lead people to God, he lived in a radical spirit of prayer, a personal and intimate relationship with Christ, the celebration of Holy Mass, Eucharistic adoration and apostolic poverty, appearing to his contemporaries as an obvious a sign of God's presence, drawing many penitents to approach his confessional. Under the conditions of freedom in which we can exercise the priestly ministry, it is necessary that priests live with 'high standards’ their response to the call, because only those who become the daily living presence of the Lord can inspire in the faithful a sense of sin, give courage and give birth to the desire for God's forgiveness. "
For this reason, Benedict XVI urged, "one must return to the confessional as a place in which to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as well as a place to 'live' more often, so that the faithful may find mercy, counsel and comfort, to feel loved and understood by God and experience the presence of the Divine Mercy, next to the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The 'crisis' of the sacrament of Penance, often primarily challenges priests and their great responsibility to educate the people of God to the radical demands of the Gospel. In particular, it asks them to give themselves generously to listening to sacramental confession; the courage to drive the flock, so they do not conform themselves to this world (cf. Rom 12:2), so they know how to make choices, but also ones that go against the current, avoiding the easy way out or compromises”.
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