Transcript

One of the most common questions about the sacrament of penance, also known as confession or reconciliation, is why we as Catholics have to confess our sins to a priest.

What's the point?

Why can't we go to another believer or go straight to Jesus Christ, the divine physician?

In this video, we'll tackle these important questions and explore what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say on the subject, so stick around.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, Jesus Christ is the physician of souls who works on hearts of his followers so that they learn to love what is good and to reject what is evil.

He performs the work of interior conversion in every soul who invites his presence.

Aquinas goes on to explain that Christ also commissions ministers to complete by outward sacraments what he has begun inwardly.

He equips his priests with purgative medicines like baptism and confession to take away the fever of sin.

Hence, confessing one's sins to a priest is to let the divine physician continue a life-saving surgery in your life.

For those who commit sin after baptism, confession to a priest is necessary to remove the disorder and regain spiritual integrity.

St. Thomas Aquinas says the following: It is necessary for the sinner's salvation that sin be taken away from him, which cannot be done without the sacrament of penance, wherein the power of Christ's passion operates through the priest's absolution and the acts of the penitent who cooperates with grace onto the destruction of sins.

Aquinas compares sacramental confession to a seriously injured person in need of medical treatment.

Were there no injuries or illnesses, men and women would be born and grow to maturity nourished by food and drink and the other necessities of life, but with no need of medical interventions.

But this is not human life as we know it.

In fact, we find ourselves threatened by many dangers, and not all of them are outside of us.

St. Thomas teaches that the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist suffice for birth, growth, and nourishment in the interior life of grace.

But given the possibility of personal sin, a deliberate choice to think, speak, or act away from God, a special sacrament is needed to restore the fallen Christian to holiness.

This is the sacrament of penance.

The Catholic priest acts as a minister or agent of Christ, the divine physician, caring for the spiritual wounds of sinners.

One of St. Thomas' favorite theologians, St. Augustine, says that, Confession lays bare the hidden disease of the soul by hope of pardon.

Those who find themselves spiritually sick, perhaps through an ongoing battle with a deadly vice, can find solace and hope in submitting themselves to the spiritual doctor and his assistants.

With the confession of specific sins, an infected part of the soul can be revealed, then sanitized by absolution, and granted an ongoing remedy through the acceptance of a penance.

But why confess to a priest?

Shouldn't any believer be able to act as one of Christ's physician assistants?

While it is true that confession to those who are not ordained may be helpful from a human standpoint, Jesus Christ bestowed upon the apostles and their ordained successors a unique power to forgive sins on behalf of God.

Through a deep, spiritual configuration to the divine physician, every Catholic priest has the ability to hear and forgive the sins of his fellow men and women, not simply as a man hears and forgives them, but as hearing and forgiving for God.

Commissioned to forgive sins in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, priests provide repentant sinners with special access to Jesus the Savior.

This is what St. Thomas Aquinas means when he says that, quote, The power of Christ's passion operates through the priest's absolution and the acts of the penitent, unquote.

How did the first priest get started in this work as assistants of Jesus, the divine physician?

During his time on Earth, Jesus proclaimed repentance, or wholehearted conversion from ways of thinking and acting apart from God.

Hence, Christ first recorded words in the Gospel according to St. Mark: Repent and believe in the Gospel.

The apostles came to recognize the good news, that Jesus came to save sinners as a spiritual physician whose business lies not with the healthy, but with the sick.

And he later commissioned them to preach forgiveness in his name to all nations.

It is important to note that Christ did not send his apostles and their appointed successors into the world empty-handed or ill-equipped.

They were commanded to dispense the sacrament of baptism needed by every member of the human race and to thereby grant to them a second birth.

But baptism was not the only spiritual procedure Christ's priests were equipped to undertake.

He also gave them the power to bind and to loose as recorded in Matthew chapter 16.

This spiritual power represented by the metaphorical keys given to St. Peter.

He and certain other disciples were empowered to make judgments with eternal consequences for other members of the Church.

Most concretely, in John chapter 20, Jesus granted his first priest the power to forgive sins.

These are his first words to his disciples after rising from the dead: Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

These chosen men were not without fault or fear, but on that first Easter, they personally benefited from the now glorious wounds of the Savior, and they were commissioned to extend his healing power to all.

They in turn ordained more priests so that their master's healing presence would go with them.

Christian disciples today have access to Jesus the divine physician, especially through the humble ministry of priests.

The wounds he carried in his risen state were no longer signs of weakness, but an invitation to sinners: You see my sacred wounds that won salvation.

Now show me your spiritual wounds caused by sin.

Let me heal you through the ministry of a priest.

We should never hide our weakness or our failure from God.

We should ask for healing.

The priest who hears and forgives our sins is Christ's visible minister, and he will keep what we reveal absolutely secret.

He acts here not as an ordinary man, but as God's special agent.

This is what is meant by the seal of confession.

All the more encouragement to come to the divine physician who wishes to restore the life and holiness of your baptism through the sacrament of penance.

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