← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 204: Summary of Sacrament of Reconciliation (2025)
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In today’s nugget day, Fr. Mike reviews the major themes of the sacrament of Reconciliation. Fr. Mike emphasizes the six spiritual effects of this sacrament and reminds us of the great gift of Confession because, as the Catechism states, “to the eyes of faith, no evil is graver than sin.” We conclude today’s article with humble gratitude for God’s unfathomable mercy. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1485-1498.
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Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 204, we reading paragraphs 1485 to 1498 nuggets and as always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today, as I said, is nugget day. From 1485 all the way to 1498, we have nothing but nuggets. Today it is truly the whole chicken. So we've been talking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation, humiliation, the Sacrament of Penance, the Sacrament of Confession for the last number of days. Today's our final day before we launch in tomorrow to the anointing of the sick, the other sacrament of healing. And so as we do this recap, as we do this nugget review, let's just take a moment and call upon the Lord. We know this. We know the goodness, the truth. We know the beauty and the grace of God's forgiveness that comes to us in reconciliation, that sacrament. And so let's just let this be a review and let this be a thing that not only illuminates our mind, but touches the depths of our hearts and actually even moves us by God's grace to surrender ourselves and to submit our sins to the Lord to be forgiven. Let's pray now. Father in Heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you. We thank you for your love, your unstoppable and unfailing love. We thank you for your mercy that meets us in our misery. Lord God, we have mercenary hearts and you have a merciful heart. And we ask that you please meet us in our brokenness and meet us even in our resistance to grace. Whether that resistance be anger or frustration, whether that resistance be self condemnation or embarrassment. If that resistance is shame or is anger, Lord God, ask you to please meet every one of us wherever we are, and bring us to your mercy, bring us to your grace and bring us to your heart. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son, Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 204. We are reading paragraphs 1485 to 1498 nuggets. Here we go. In brief. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, Jesus showed himself to his apostles. He breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. The forgiveness of sins committed after baptism is conferred by a particular sacrament called the sacrament of conversion, confession, penance or reconciliation. The sinner wounds God's honor and love, his own human dignity as a man called to be a son of God and the spiritual well being of the Church, of which each Christian ought to be a living stone to the eyes of faith. No evil is graver than sin, and nothing has worse consequences for sinners themselves, for the Church, and for the whole world. To return to communion with God after having lost it through sin is a process born of the grace of God, who is rich in mercy and solicitous for the salvation of men. One must ask for this precious gift for oneself and for others. The movement of return to God, called conversion and repentance, entails sorrow for and abhorrence of sins committed and the firm purpose of sinning no more in the future. Conversion touches the past and the future and is nourished by hope in God's mercy. The sacrament of penance is a whole consisting in three actions of the penitent and the priest's absolution. The penitent's acts are repentance, confession, or disclosure of sins to the priest, and the intention to make reparation and do works of reparation. Repentance, also called contrition, must be inspired by motives that arise from faith. If repentance arises from love of charity for God, it is called perfect contrition. If it is founded on other motives, it is called imperfect. One who desires to obtain reconciliation with God and with the Church must confess to a priest all the unconfessed grave sins he remembers after having carefully examined his conscience. The confession of venial faults, without being necessary in itself, is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church. The confessor proposes the performance of certain acts of satisfaction or penance to be performed by the penitent in order to repair the harm caused by sin and to re establish habits befitting a disciple of Christ. Only priests who have received the faculty of absolving from the authority of the Church can forgive sins in the name of Christ. The spiritual effects of the sacrament of penance, reconciliation with God, by which the penitent recovers grace, reconciliation with the Church, remission of the eternal punishment incurred by mortal sins, remission, at least in part, of temporal punishments resulting from sin, peace and serenity of conscience and spiritual consolation, an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle. Individual and integral confession of grave sins followed by absolution remains the only ordinary means of reconciliation with God and with the Church. Through indulgences, the faithful can obtain the remission of temporal punishment resulting from sin for themselves and also for the souls in Purgatory. Right, there we have it, day 204, paragraphs 1485 to 1498. That in brief, those nuggets, as I said at the beginning, we know this. This is something we've been praying about and learning about for the last number of days. But a couple things just to be reminded of. When it comes to the big question people continually ask, why do I have to go to a priest for confession? The answer is, because that's how Jesus set it up. That's how Jesus gave us this mystery of forgiveness, this mystery of reconciliation, the ministry of reconciliation. That's how he gave it to us. As it's here in John, chapter 20, verse 19, and then verses 22 and 23, that truth, that historical fact that the Lord God himself gave the ability, the authority to forgive and to bind or retain at least sins to the apostles, and that passes on to their successors. And that's just. That's how it goes. That's just. That's the gift. And again, how we look at that reveals so much about our hearts. If I look at that and say, ah, gosh, why do I have to do this kind of thing? Oh, shucks. You know, what the heck? This is so stupid. I wish he didn't do this versus oh, my goodness, Lord, thank you so much. Thank you so much that I know you're a God of mercy. I know you're a God of forgiveness. I know that you're a God who's good. You died for me, you live for me. You reign in heaven to intercede. You know, as it says, the Son sits right under the Father interceding for us. I mean, that's how good God is. And he also gives us this opportunity, this place that you and I can go and we lay down our sins, we hand over our hearts in humility, we surrender ourselves in confession, and we receive, mediated through that ministry of the priest, mediated through the church, God's unfathomable and infinite mercy. Again, the two perspectives we could have about the fact that God has established the sacrament of reconciliation reveals a lot about our hearts. One is a heart. I don't want to say it like this, but one is a heart of pride, a heart that says, I don't want to have to submit myself. I don't want to have to surrender myself. I don't want to have to be humble before another human being. The other is a heart of gratitude, a heart that says, I hate sin. God, you love me. And so thank you for giving me this, all of us, this gift, because that's the next piece, 1488, that hatred of sin. 1488 highlights this. And I just think it's worth all of us to reflect on this some more. It says, to the eyes of faith, no evil is graver than sin, and nothing has worse consequences for sinners themselves, for the church, and for the whole world. I think this is important to note because, you know, tomorrow we're going on to the sacrament of the Anointing of the sick. We're going to talk about what the role sickness has in this world. That, yes, God made a world that was completely whole and intact and good. And there was no sickness, there was no death, there was no suffering. And then, you know, sin breaks the world. You know, original sin. We now experience a lot of evil. We experience a lot of suffering, and not everyone gets healed. Even though Jesus Christ is the healer, he is the divine physician in the sacrament of anointing of the sick is oriented towards healing. We recognize that. We have to understand, we have to. We have to see with the eyes of faith that there is no graver evil than sin. Yes, suffering and death, these are. These are things that God did not intend. These are not good. But we have to remember that there is a worse evil than death. There is a worse evil than suffering. There's a worse evil than many of the evils that you and I go through. And that evil is something you and I choose. Sin. Nothing is graver. There is no evil graver than sin. And nothing has worse consequences for the sinners themselves, for the church, and for the whole world. We need that mindset as we move forward tomorrow. And that's just one of the things I really wanted to emphasize today, because without that mindset, what we talk about, when we talk about healing what we talk about, when we talk about Jesus Christ entering into our lives and truly giving us these sacraments of healing, we're going to think, well, no, but what if a person isn't physically healed? Then it doesn't really matter. Again, we're going to address those questions and those issues later on. But to set us up, well, I think it's important for us to be reminded. I'll say it one more time. There is no evil graver than sin. And nothing has worse consequences for sinners themselves, for the Church and for the whole world than sin. It's the worst thing in the world. We also went on to talk about how this movement of return to God called conversion, and what does it entail, entails sorrow for and abhorrence of sins committed. Like, I'm sorry for this and I hate my sins. The firm purpose of sinning no more in the future, and then revealing the sins to the priest. And of course, in absolution, we get these graces. This is this amazing gift that God gives us. Where, what are the effects? There are six effects, six spiritual effects of the sacrament of penance. Number one, because we didn't cover these in bullet form, this is the last thing we're going to cover. The six bullets is like mini nuggets in the nugget of 1496. The six spiritual effects of the sacrament of penance are, first, reconciliation with God by which the penitent recovers grace. So good. Two, reconciliation with the Church. Number three, remission of the eternal punishment incurred by moral sins. Remember that eternal punishment, hell. Jesus takes care of that. Amazing. So remission of that eternal punishment due to sin. Four, remission, at least in part, of temporal punishments resulting from sin. So yes, we do penances and we have indulgences and whatnot for the continued remission of temporal punishment, temporal consequences due to sin. But confession itself also has that entailed number five, peace and serenity of conscience and spiritual consolation. That's important because some people will say, I went to confession, I didn't feel anything. That's okay. I would say that's wonderful. That is wonderful. Be at peace with that. Be at peace with the fact that I went to confession and I didn't. I wasn't overwhelmed by any. Any feelings of serenity or any spiritual consolation. I was just like, oh, okay, here we are. Wonderful. That is a gift. Be at peace with that. And the sixth spiritual effect of the sacrament of penance is an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle. It gives us strength to move forward. Just like the Eucharist not only feeds us and unites us closer and closer to Jesus Christ and to the church, it also helps us in the battle against sin, reconciliation. It fortifies us. It gives us an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle. And we, absolutely, you and I, we need to that. We need that. We get it every time we ask God for this. I mean, that's the crazy thing. We get it every time we come before the Lord in sacraments or in prayer. He answers. He hears our prayers and he answers our prayers. Right now, I invite you, please pray for that spiritual strength to engage in the Christian battle. Not sometimes I picture it like, be the warrior out there. We're going to do it. And sometimes it's like, okay, Lord, actually in the spiritual battle, you're going to need to be my shield. You're going to need to defend me because I know how weak I am. So please give me that increase in spiritual strength to engage in spiritual battle. I am praying for you guys. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.