March 30, 2025 - Pastor Message
April 25, 2025JUBILEE 2025 THE ACT OF CONTRITION
JUBILEE 2025
THE ACT OF CONTRITION
“Having been justified therefore by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith to that grace in which we stand and boast in the hope of God’s glory. And not only this, but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation builds up endurance, and endurance builds up proven virtue, and proven virtue builds up hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For Christ, while we were still weak, died for the ungodly at the accorded time. For barely would one die for someone who is just; yet perhaps one might bring oneself to die for a good person. But God commends his charity towards us, because, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:1-9).
A major theme of every jubilee year is God’s mercy. This jubilee year, the Church invites us to reflect on God’s mercy as our source of hope during our pilgrimage through the tribulations of this life to the kingdom of God. The fountain of God’s mercy is the saving sacrifice of Christ, who dies for us on the cross to free us from sin and death and give us new life. God pours the mercy of the cross out for us through the sacraments, and the sacrament through which we are renewed in God’s grace when we have rejected it by sin, a special focus of a jubilee year, is the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.
The jubilee invites us to encounter God’s mercy again in the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, especially if we’ve been away from the sacrament for a while. No doubt there are many reasons people may stay away from the sacrament, but a contributing factor has to be a decreased sense of our need for it. Many of us just don’t think we need to go to confession today. Failing to celebrate this great gift, however, denies us the grace and hope this encounter with God’s mercy brings. Over the next few weeks of Lent, I will explore our need for the sacrament and how to best take advantage of it by reflecting on the necessary precondition for celebrating the sacrament, contrition, and our expression of it through the Act of Contrition.
The first point to make about the Act of Contrition is that there is no Act of Contrition. There are actually many different acts of contrition, and, as long as they cover the essential bases, they’re all good. People will often come to confession and tell me that they know “the old form” or use another form they may have learned in school or religious education or that they have developed themselves, and that is all perfectly fine. The official Order of Penance approved by the Church offers several examples but simply instructs the penitent “to express his/her contrition, which the penitent may do in these or similar words.” In next week’s column, we will look at one of the more traditional examples offered in Order of Penance, but everyone should always feel free to use whatever act of contrition best helps them enter into the celebration of the sacrament.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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