In the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, “sin” is a failure to observe the commandments laid before the people at Mount Sinai. In the prophetic literature, sin is a violation of the covenant between God and his people. Hence, there is emphasis on collective culpability and social sin. In the wisdom literature of the Bible, sin is foolishness. Whereas holiness or righteousness is depicted as true wisdom, that is, a healthy respect or fear of the Lord.
In the New Testament, the Gospel upholds the validity of the Ten Commandments and underscores the role of the heart in one’s observance of the Law. Moreover, Jesus constantly chastises the Pharisees for rendering lip service to the Law and for double standards in the interpretation of the Law. However, in a sense, the sin signifies the violation of the two Great Commandments – love of God and love of neighbor. Though these commandments are not new, insofar as these are in the Old Testament, the new revelation is actually in the person of Christ. He not only tells the Jews and Gentiles what has to be done, he shows them how by the example of his life.
Through his Death and Resurrection, Christ ushers in a new covenant, not etched in stone but in the heart. Acceptance of the person of Christ is thereby acceptance of the new covenant and concomitantly of salvation. Acts and Paul’s letters again reiterate the reality of sin and describe Christ’s death and Resurrection as atonement or satisfaction for the sins of all people; whence arises the understanding of vicarious suffering as hinted at in Isaiah. Moreover, this atonement not only restores us to communion with God the Father, it transforms us, and calls us to share in God’s glory, an end that transcends the potentialities of our nature. Christ institutes the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He bestows the power of the keys to bind and to loose, to forgive and retain sins to the apostles; however, it is from the pen of Paul and John that we apprehend how sin not only offends God but also the faith community, known to us as “Church.”
Having already traced the roots of this sacrament in the Scriptures, let us now move to Tradition. Here, our point of departure is within the faith communities of the early Christians. It was the understanding of the early Church that after Baptism, only once could someone be reconciled. If someone is in sin, the faith community excommunicated him or her temporarily. Meanwhile, the faithful would pray for the sinner that he or she might repent. When the faith community had ample reason to believe that this sinner repented, then the penitent could be reconciled to the Church. We should also bear in mind that in the early Church, penance was public. The person who confessed sin joined a liturgical order of penitents, which, under the direction of the bishop, would perform certain penances publicly; then, on Holy Thursday evening, the bishop absolved these penitents of their sins and reconciled them with God and the community of faith. This form of penance pervaded in the Eastern Christian communities, such as in Ephesus, Cappadocia and Greece.
In the West, private confession was the norm. This practice’s roots stem from the Irish monks. Remember that in Ireland, the Church evolved around the monasteries, instead of the diocesan network of continental Europe. The structure of the monastery was such that neither the monks nor the abbot could leave the abbey to observe public penitents; wherefore, people would come to the monastery to confess sins. The monks assigned the penitents a penance to perform on their own. To help the monks, many of whom were uneducated men, hear confession, tables of commutation were constructed, and these guided the monks in assigning penances. For example, if someone confessed missing Mass, then the penance on the table would indicate one decade of the prayer, “Hail Mary.” These tables of commutation were probably responsible for the fetish of frequency, which is, asking penitents how many times they committed each sin. The only benefit of frequency today, if confessed, is that it indicates to the priest whether someone freely committed a sin or may be suffering from a mental disorder. Stealing one apple may qualify for a sin; however, stealing an apple every time one enters a store might be a compulsive act due to complex, psychological factors.
Father Comandini is managing editor of “The Catholic Spirit.”