Confession teaches both priests and penitents to be humble and aware of God’s forgiveness, Pope Benedict XVI said March 25.
“By administering the Sacrament of Penance we can receive profound
lessons of humility and faith,” he told a gathering of priests at the
Vatican.
“For each priest, this is a powerful call to an awareness of
his own identity. Never could we hear the confessions of our brothers
and sisters merely on the strength of our own humanity.”
“If they come to us it is only because we are priests, configured to
Christ, the Supreme and Eternal Priest, and granted the capacity of
acting in His Name and Person, so as to make present the God Who
forgives, renews and transforms,” the Pope said.
His remarks addressed participants in an annual course organized by
the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican tribunal in charge of granting
indulgences, resolving sins reserved to the Pope, and resolving matters
of conscience forwarded to the Holy See.
The course concerned the “internal forum,” a technical term for the
personal area of conscience and judgment in the priest-penitent
relationship.
Pope Benedict told the priests that the sacrament of Penance teaches
the priest about his faith and the truth and poverty of his person. It
also nourishes in him an awareness of his sacramental identity.
He also pointed out that individual freedom and self-awareness are expressed “particularly clearly” in the sacrament.
"It is perhaps for this reason too that, in an age of relativism and
of the consequent reduced awareness of self, the practice of this
Sacrament should also have diminished.”
The pontiff then touched on the practice known as an examination of
conscience, which involves a review of one’s sins and failings. This
practice, he said, teaches Catholics to compare their lives with “the
truth of the Gospel.”
Comparing one’s life with the Commandments, the Beatitudes and “above
all” the commandment to love represents a great “school of penance,”
Pope Benedict told the priests.
An “integral confession” helps penitents
recognize their own fragility, achieve an awareness of the need for
God’s forgiveness, and achieve the belief that divine grace can
transform life.
“(D)o not fail to give appropriate space to exercising the ministry
of penance in the confessional. To be welcomed and heard is also a human
sign of God's welcome and goodness towards His children,” he said.