Christopher Wendt: Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Your Excellency,
His Excellency: Good evening.
Christopher Wendt: I greet all members of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima, and I greet all guests tonight. Tonight’s broadcast is gonna be part two of the sacrament of Holy Confession, and it will conclude that part. But before we start, Your Excellency, could you lead us in a prayer?
His Excellency: Yes. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Christopher Wendt: Before we start, I just have a quick announcement. If you haven’t gotten a copy of His Excellency’s book Credo, I highly recommend it. It’s a great catechism. It tackles a lot of current ethical topics but within the tradition of our faith. You can get it on Amazon, or you can also get it from Sophia Press.
Also, we are making a consecration as a worldwide family. We will be ending the consecration on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima in one month, May 13th. We started three days ago, on April 10th, and we still invite you. It’s not too late to join. It’s never too late to give Our Lady your life, death, and eternity.
We have about 1,000 people already signed up throughout the world, giving everything to Our Lady, and you’re welcome to join. We have blue books that are kind of late, but if you want to ask for a blue book, we’ll send it to you.
Also, we are continuing with the spiritual crusade, where we’re trying to get as many people as possible to pray for the Holy Pope by praying the daily Rosary for that intention, and also by making the Five First Saturdays. It’s not too late to make your Five First Saturdays this year, so I highly encourage you to take advantage of that starting in May. We’ll be sending you emails to remind you about the spiritual crusade and also emails about the consecration.
And without further ado, I turn it over to His Excellency.
His Excellency: Now we will look at the next part of the Sacrament of Penance. Last time, we started with the first part, and now we look at the second. So, the first item in our talk this evening is the confession itself, the necessity of confession to confess the sins, and then perfect contrition.
And so we will see that confession is rightly called also an accusation. We confess our sins with a view to obtaining pardon from the Lord. In this respect, the tribunal of the Sacrament of Penance differs from all other tribunals which take cognizance of capital offenses, in which a confession of guilt does not secure acquittal and pardon, but penalty and punishment. In the secular tribunals, this is the case.
But this is a different tribunal, Holy Confession. This is a sacrament instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ. After His resurrection, He breathed on the apostles together, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”
In giving priests the power to retain and forgive sins, it is evident that our Lord made them also judges in this matter. Our Lord seems to have signified the same thing when having raised Lazarus from the dead, He commanded His apostles to loose him from the bands in which he was bound. This is the interpretation of St. Augustine.
The priest, he says, can now do more. They can exercise greater clemency toward those who confess and whose sins they forgive in the name of the Lord. The Lord, in giving over Lazarus, whom He had already raised from the dead, to be loosed by the hands of His disciples, wished us to understand that priests were given the power of loosing. This is the interpretation of St. Augustine.
This also reflects the command given by our Lord to the lepers cured, on the way, that they show themselves to the priests and subject themselves to their judgment, invested as they are by the Lord with power to remit and retain sins. Priests are evidently appointed also as judges of the matter on which they are to pronounce.
And since, according to the wise remark of the Council of Trent, we cannot form an accurate judgment on any matter or award to crime a just proportion of punishment without having previously examined and made ourselves well acquainted with the case, it follows that the penitent is obliged to make known to the priest, through the medium of confession, each and every mortal sin.
There are also some symbols and figures in the Old Testament, for example, the different kinds of sacrifices which were offered by the priest with the aim of expiation of different sorts of sins. These also seem to have reference to the sacrament of confession in the New Testament, the confession of sins.
Let us now look at the age at which confession is obligatory. According to the canon already of the Council of Lateran, the Fourth Council of Lateran, no person is bound by the law of confession until he has arrived at the use of reason. It may, however, be laid down as a general principle that children are bound to go to confession as soon as they are able to discern good from evil and are capable of malice.
For when a person has arrived at an age when he must begin to attend to the work of his salvation, he is bound to confess his sins to a priest, since there is no other salvation for one whose conscience is burdened with sin. The Church commands all the faithful to confess their sins at least once a year.
If, however, we consult our eternal interests, we will certainly not neglect to have recourse to confession as often at least as we are in danger of death or undertake to perform any act incompatible with the state of sin, such as to administer a sacrament or to receive a sacrament. The same rule should be strictly followed when we are apprehensive of forgetting some sin into which we may have fallen.
Now, let us look at the qualities of confession. The confession should be entire. All mortal sins must be confessed. Venial sins, which do not separate us from the grace of God and into which we frequently fall, although they may be usefully confessed also, as experience proves, may be omitted without sin and expiated by a variety of other means.
Mortal sins, however, are all to be confessed, even though they be most secret. Such secret sins often inflict deeper wounds on the soul than those which are committed openly and publicly. St. Ambrose speaks: without the confession of his sin, no man can be justified from his sin.
In confirmation of the same doctrine, St. Jerome says: if the serpent, the devil, has secretly and without the knowledge of a third person bitten anyone and has infused into him the poison of sin, if, unwilling to disclose his wound to his brother or master, he is silent and will not do penance, his master, who has a tongue ready to cure him, can then do him no service.
The same doctrine we find in St. Cyprian also: guiltless, he says, of the heinous crime of sacrificing to idols or of having purchased certificates to that effect, yet as they entertained the thought of doing so, they should confess it. This grieves the priests of God.
In fine, such is the unanimous voice and teaching of the Fathers of the Church already in the first centuries, the obligation to confess mortal sins to the priest.
His Excellency: In confession, we should employ all that care and exactness which we usually bestow upon worldly concerns of great moment, and all our efforts should be directed to the cure of our soul’s wounds and the destruction of the roots of sin. We should not be satisfied with the bare enumeration of our mortal sins but should mention such circumstances as considerably aggravate or extenuate their malice. Some circumstances are so serious in themselves as to constitute mortal guilt.
Thus, if one man has killed another, he must state whether his victim was a layman or an ecclesiastic. Or, if he has had sinful relations with a woman, he must state whether the female was unmarried, or married, a relative, or a person consecrated to God by religious vows. These circumstances change the nature of the sin so that the first kind of unlawful intercourse is called fornication simply. The second is called adultery, the third is called incest, and the fourth is called sacrilege.
Again, theft is numbered in the catalogue of sins. But if a person has stolen one coin, his sin is less grievous than if he had stolen one hundred or two hundred. But an immense sum, circumstances such as these, are therefore to be mentioned. But those which do not considerably aggravate the malice of the sin may be lawfully omitted.
Then there is this problem of sins concealed. So important is it that confession be entire, that if the penitent confesses only some of his mortal sins and willfully neglects to accuse himself of other mortal sins which should be confessed, he not only does not profit from his confession but involves himself in new guilt. Such an enumeration of sins cannot be called sacramental confession. On the contrary, the penitent must repeat his confession, not omitting to accuse himself of having, under a semblance of confession, willfully profaned the sanctity of this sacrament.
Then, sins forgotten. But should the confession seem defective, either because the penitent forgot some grievous sins or because, although intent on confessing all his sins, he did not examine his conscience with sufficient accuracy, he is not bound to repeat his confession. It will be sufficient, when he recollects the sins which he had forgotten, to confess them at the future and next occasion of confession.
So, the confession should be plain, simple, and sincere. Our confession should be plain, simple, and undisguised, not artfully made, as is the case with some who seem more intent on defending themselves than on confessing their own sins. Our confession should be such as to disclose to the priest a true image of our lives, such as we know them to be, exhibiting as doubtful that which is doubtful, and as certain that which is certain.
Confession should be prudent, modest, and brief. Prudence and modesty in explaining matters of confession are also much to be commended, and superfluity of words is to be carefully avoided. Whenever it is necessary to make known the nature of every sin, it is to be explained briefly and modestly. Even if we could promise ourselves a long life, yet it would be truly disgraceful if we, who are so particular in whatever relates to cleanliness of dress or person, were not at least equally careful in preserving the purity of the soul, unstained from the foul stains of sin.
Then, look at the minister of the sacrament. The minister of the Sacrament of Penance must be approved, possessing ordinary or delegated jurisdiction. The priest must be invested not only with the power of sacramental orders, but also with that of jurisdiction. This is also most fitting, for as all the grace imparted by the sacrament is communicated from Christ the Head to His members, He who alone has power to consecrate His true body, a priest, should alone have power to administer the sacrament to His mystical body, the faithful, particularly as they are qualified and disposed by means of the Sacrament of Penance to receive the Holy Eucharist.
The scrupulous care with which, in the primitive ages of the Church, the Church guarded the right of the ordinary priest is easily seen from the ancient decrees of the Fathers of the Church and the councils, which provided that no bishop or priest, except in case of great necessity, presume to exercise any function or jurisdiction in the parish or diocese of another without the authority of him governing there.
So, the minister is in danger of death. In order that none may perish, if there is an imminent danger of death and recourse cannot be had to the proper priest who has the jurisdiction, according to the ancient practice of the Church and currently, it is lawful for any priest not only to remit all kinds of sins, whatever faculties they might otherwise require, but also to absolve even from excommunication.
So, the minister of the sacrament is also holding the place at once of Church and physician. As a judge, he is to examine into the nature of sins and, among the various kinds of sins, to judge which are grievous and which are not, keeping in view the rank and condition of the person and the circumstances. As a physician, it belongs to him to administer to the diseased soul those healing medicines which will not only effect the cure from mortal sin but provide suitable preservation against its future contagion.
So the confessor must observe the secrecy, the seal of confession. The laws of the Church threaten the severest penalties against any priest who would fail to observe a perpetual silence and secrecy concerning all the sins confessed to him in the Sacrament of Confession. To priests, says the great Council of Lateran, the Fourth, in 1215, take special care neither by word or sign, nor by any other means whatever, to betray in the least degree the sinner.
Then the third part of penance is the satisfaction. The general meaning of the word satisfaction is the payment of a debt. Satisfaction is a compensation for an injury done to another. Theologians make use of the word satisfaction to signify the compensation man makes by offering to God some reparation for the sins he has committed.
There are various kinds of satisfaction with God. This sort of satisfaction, since it has several degrees, can be understood in various senses. The first and highest degree of satisfaction is that by which whatever we owe to God, it is a satisfaction for which we are indebted to Christ our Lord alone, who paid the price of our sins on the cross and offered to God a superabundant satisfaction. No created being could have been of such worth as to deliver us from so heavy a debt.
“Our Lord is the propitiation for our sins,” says the Apostle John, “and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” This satisfaction is full and superabundant, perfectly adequate to the debt of all sins committed in humanity. It gives man’s actions great worth before God, and without it, they would be deserving of no esteem whatever.
This David seems to have had in view when, having asked himself, “What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that he has rendered to me?” and finding nothing besides the satisfaction which he expressed by the word “chalice” as a return for so many and such great favors, he replied, “I will take the chalice of salvation, and I will call upon the name of the Lord.”
Let us look at the necessity of satisfaction. Sin carries in its train two evils: the stain and the punishment. Whenever the stain is effaced, the punishment of eternal death is forgiven with the guilt to which it was due. Yet, as the Council of Trent declares, the remains of sin and the temporal punishment are not always eliminated. Of these, the Scriptures afford many conspicuous examples.
Of David, however, is the best known. Although the prophet Nathan had announced to him, “The Lord also has taken away thy sin,” yet David voluntarily subjected himself to the most severe penance, imploring night and day the mercy of God in these words: “Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.”
Thus did he beseech the Lord to pardon not only the crime, but also the punishment due to it, and to restore him, cleansed from the remains of sin, to his former state of purity and integrity. These he besought with most earnest supplications, and yet the Lord punished his transgression with the loss of his adulterous offspring, the child, the rebellion, then in the death of his beloved son Absalom later, and with the other chastisements and calamities with which he had previously threatened him.
Let us now look at the advantages of satisfaction. It is required by God’s justice and mercy. Why, in the Sacrament of Penance, as in the depth of Baptism, the punishment due to sin is not entirely remitted, is admirably explained in these words of the Council of Trent. There is a difference: in Baptism, the punishment is remitted entirely; in the Sacrament of Penance, not, and the Council of Trent explains it.
The Divine Justice seems to require that they who through ignorance sinned before Baptism should recover the friendship of God in a different manner from those who, after they had been freed from sin and the devil and had received the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism, dared to violate the temple of God and grieve the Holy Spirit through mortal sin after Baptism.
It is also in keeping with the Divine Mercy not to remit our sins without any satisfaction, lest, taking occasion hence and imagining our sins less grievous than they are, we become careless. Furthermore, these satisfactions serve as testimonies of our sorrow for the sin committed and thus atone for the Church, which is grievously insulted by our crimes.
God, says St. Augustine, despises not a contrite and humble heart. But as heartfelt grief is generally concealed from others and is not manifested by words or other signs, wisely, therefore are penitential times are appointed by those who preside over the Church to atone to the Church in which sins are forgiven.
Then, satisfaction deters others from sin. The Church, therefore, with great wisdom ordained that when anyone had committed a public crime, a public penance should be imposed on him so that others, being deterred by fear, might more carefully avoid sin in the future.
With regard to public sinners in the ancient Church, they were never absolved until they had performed the public penance. During the performance of this penance, the priests poured out prayers to God for their salvation and ceased not to exhort the penitents to do the same. In this respect, great was the care and solicitude of the bishop St. Ambrose, of whom it is related that many who came to the tribunal of the Sacrament of Penance with hardened hearts were so softened by his tears as to conceive the sorrow of true contrition.
So, St. Ambrose, in listening to the confession of the saints, began to weep with tears of compassion. By satisfaction, we are made like unto Christ. By undergoing these penances, we are made like unto Jesus Christ our Head, since He suffered. As St. Bernard observes, nothing can appear so unseemly as a delicate member under a Head crowned with thorns. To use the words of the Apostle, we are joint heirs with Christ, yet so if we suffer with Christ, and again, if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Christ. Again, if we suffer with Christ, we shall reign with Him.
So, satisfaction heals the wounds of our sins. St. Bernard also observes that sin produces two effects: a stain on the soul and a wound. The stain is removed through the mercy of God, while to heal the wound inflicted by sin, the remedy of penance is most necessary. When a wound has been healed, some scars remain, which demand attention. Likewise, about the soul, after the guilt of sin is forgiven, some of its effects remain, from which the soul requires cleansing.
St. John Chrysostom fully confirms the same doctrine when he says, it is not enough that the arrow has been extracted from the body; the wound which it inflicted must also be healed. So, with regard to the soul, it is not enough that sin has been pardoned. The wound which it has left must also be healed by penance and satisfaction.
Let us look at the source of satisfaction and the efficacy of penance. We may have some idea of it if we reflect that it arises entirely from the merits of the Passion of the Cross of our Lord. It is His Passion that imparts to our good actions their greatest advantages.
The first is that we may merit the rewards of eternal glory so that a cup of cold water given in His name shall not be without its reward. The second is that we may be able to atone for our sins. Nor does this lessen the most perfect and superabundant satisfaction of Christ our Lord, but on the contrary, renders it still more illustrious. For the grace of Christ is seen to abound more, inasmuch as it communicates to us not only what He merited and paid of Himself alone, but also, as Head of His mystical Body, what He merited and paid in His members.
Thus, in holy and just men, it can be seen how such great weight and dignity belong to the good actions of the pious people and souls. For Christ our Lord continually infuses His grace into the devout soul, united to Him by charity, as the Head to the members, or as the vine through the branches. This grace always precedes, accompanies, and follows our good works. The grace of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ precedes, accompanies, and follows our good works, and without it, we can have no merit, nor can we at all satisfy God.
Now, the conditions of satisfaction. In satisfaction, two things are particularly required. The one is that he who satisfies is in a state of grace, a friend of God since works done without faith and charity cannot be acceptable to God. The other is that the works performed are such as are of their nature painful or laborious. They are a compensation for past sins, and to use the words of the holy martyrs and St. Cyprian, the redeemers, as it were, of past sins, and must therefore in some way be disagreeable and have some form of penance.
There are three kinds of satisfaction: prayer, fasting, and almsdeeds, which correspond to the three kinds of goods which we have received from God: those of the soul, those of the body, and those that are called external goods. Since whatever is in the world, says St. John, is the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, everyone can see that to these three causes of disease are opposed to those three remedies: the first, fasting; to the second, alms deeds; to the third, prayer.
Moreover, if we consider those whom our sins injure, we shall easily perceive why all kinds of satisfaction are reduced especially to these three. For those we offend by our sins are God, our neighbor, and ourselves. God we appease by prayer, our neighbor we satisfy by alms and charity, and ourselves we chastise by fasting or other corporal penance.
As this life is ruled by many various afflictions, those who patiently bear all the trials and afflictions coming from the hands of God acquire abundant satisfaction and merits also. Whereas those who suffer with reluctance and impatience deprive themselves of all the fruits of satisfaction, merely enduring the punishment which the just judgment of God inflicts upon their sins.
So, how can one satisfy also for another, not only yourself? In this, the supreme mercy and goodness of God deserve our grateful acknowledgment and praise that God has granted to our frailty the privilege that one may satisfy for another. We profess in the Apostles’ Creed our belief in the communion of saints, for since we are all reborn to Christ in the same cleansing waters of Baptism, are partakers of the same sacraments, and above all are nourished with the same Body, and Blood of Christ as our food and drink, we are all, it is manifest, members of the same Body. As the food does not perform its function solely for itself, but also for the sake of the eyes and the entire body, so too in the Body of Christ.
And the eyes see, not only for their own sake, but for the general good of all the members. Also, works of satisfaction in the Church and our lives must be considered as profitable to us all. And so we see the beautiful mystery of the Sacrament of Penance, and the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, and the mystery of His holy satisfaction, of His holy Passion, His Holy Cross.
Thank you for your attention.
Christopher Wendt: I have a few questions for you. One, there was a lot of discussion on satisfaction.
Is satisfaction the same thing that we call penance that the priest gives us?
His Excellency: Yes, this is the other word, penances or the canonical penance, which the sacrament of Penance contains.
Christopher Wendt: Okay, and so if the priest is giving that after absolution for our wounds as a medicine, to kind of heal us from the stain is removed, but we still have the wound that needs to be healed.
His Excellency: Yes, but not always. So, the penance given in the sacrament is usually not sufficient by itself. Therefore, we speak generally of the necessity of satisfaction, and of other moments of satisfaction that we can take upon ourselves, such as the trials of our life, like sickness and other forms of suffering. These we can accept freely, with love and faith, and offer to the Lord for our sins and others in the Church.
Christopher Wendt: Yes. So, what you’re saying then to recap is that penance is a good start, but there we need to do much more penance to kind of heal the wounds and to satisfy God’s justice and mercy, except for our life, saving life. I do plenary indulgences, too.
His Excellency: Yes. The plenary indulgences also have the meaning and power to diminish even the consequences of our sins that still need to be satisfied. This is a great mercy of the Lord to have given us the possibility of these indulgences through the merits of Our Lady and all the saints in the Mystical Body of Christ. From these merits, with our collaboration in doing the prescribed works, our temporal punishments can also be diminished. We can also offer indulgences to the poor souls in purgatory, so that their satisfactions and their punishments may be reduced. This way, they can soon reach their purification and enter the beatific vision.
Christopher Wendt: Now, the question, Your Excellency, how often would you recommend, let’s say, the lay faithful, for example, to go to confession? What’s a good cadence?
His Excellency: Usually, it could be very good to at least go monthly, once a month. It’s also meaningful to practice the first Friday of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the first Saturday’s exercises. With Holy Confession, this would be very meaningful. Of course, some people have another when they have to go more frequently. Of course, they’re sure to do so when they are feeling in their soul that doing it once a month is not enough. They should follow their conscience or the inclination of their soul, their spiritual life, and go more often, depending on the situation, and the state of the soul.
Christopher Wendt: Okay, one more question. Your Excellency, thanks for that. So, private confession, I guess, based on my reading (it’s been a long time) on the history of what really was a development of the Irish monks. And so, how did confession, like actually speaking your sins, work before private confession? came on the scene in the church? Do you have a sense of what that was like? I’ve always been curious about that.
His Excellency: Well, the private confession came not only with the Irish monks, but they were already in the fourth century, and they had in Constantinople, so-called confession priests, who confessed people. So it was a slow development in the East and the West, at least from the fourth century, we have some indications that people came and confessed also their hidden sins, not only public penance. And so in the first centuries, the sacrament was administered to the public since the public knew and the sinner had to confess this to the bishop or the delegate of the bishop; in the first centuries, they had to confess was always necessary. And then the bishop imposed upon him the satisfaction or dependence. After he had done the satisfaction or the penance, he was absolved from his sin, and this time of satisfaction, or penance, could last differently according to the nature of the sin, and the frequency of the sins could be lost for some years. Then he was absolved, usually on Holy Thursday, they were absolved, so that day to quit on Easter, receive Holy Communion. And, all the pennant the time of Lent was a penitential time, also helping the sinners to do penitential works, and the entire church joined them. And so it was a comment, solidarity work of penance, even those who had not committed mortal sins, also performed a diverse of penance during Lent time. So this is beautiful, demonstrating the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, where we can also satisfy the saints, but only for ourselves and for others, acts of merit. For them, the good works also always come from the source of the passion and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christopher Wendt: So beautiful. It also makes me think also, why Our Lady of Fatima came because she wanted us to make satisfaction for the poor sinners that were going to hell, and the little ones of Fatima, and their little penance is a great witness to us. Thank you, Your Excellency, can you close our evening with a prayer?
His Excellency: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! Kyrie Eleison! Lord Jesus Christ,
You are the Good Shepherd! With Your almighty hand, You guide Your pilgrim Church through the storms of each age.
Adorn the Holy See with holy popes who neither fear the powerful of this world nor compromise with the spirit of the age, but preserve, strengthen, and defend the Catholic Faith unto the shedding of their blood, and observe, protect, and hand on the venerable liturgy of the Roman Church.
O Lord, return to us through holy popes who, inflamed with the zeal of the Apostles, proclaim to the whole world: “Salvation is found in no other than in Jesus Christ. For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which they should be saved” (see Acts 4:10-12).
Through an era of holy popes, may the Holy See, which is home to all who promote the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, always shine as the cathedra of truth for the whole world. Hear us, O Lord, and through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of the Church, grant us holy Popes, grant us many holy Popes! Have mercy on us and hear us! Amen.
Dominus vobiscum.
Christopher Wendt: Et cum spiritu tuo.
His Excellency: Et benedictio Dei Omnipotentis: Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Praise be Jesus Christ!
Christopher Wendt: Now and forever!
Thank you. This concludes our broadcast for this evening. Our next broadcast will be made on May 13th, it will be a question and answer, and we’ll be celebrating the Great Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. From His Excellency and for myself. We wish you all a good evening.
