All Seven
If we lived just five or ten years between birth, maturity, and death, we might more easily – assuming proper faith formation – hold to the high moral requirements of Christianity. But living 80 or 90 years – all those days and hours – makes it hard not to sin and then, as the Protestants like to say, backslide. The Catholic Church has a remedy for that: Confession.
Consider Christ’s words about forgiveness to Peter (Matthew 18:21-35). The future first pope asked, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” And you know what Jesus replied: not seven times but seventy times seven. (He says a lot more in the parable that follows, and it’s really, really chilling.)
Now Biblical scholars tell us that the Lord isn’t being specific doing math here: He’s not saying we ought to forgive a sinning brother 490 times. He is saying that forgiveness, which ultimately comes from the Father, is all but limitless. Although, again, what follows in the Lord’s oration is a portent about Purgatory, if not of Hell itself.
From this we may conclude that when a man heads to the Sacrament of Penance to confess the same sin for the 491st time. . . it’s okay! Praise the Lord!, as our Protestant friends would say.
Click here to read the rest of Mr. Miner’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .
