Forgiveness

200 words: Our call to be witnesses to the forgiveness of sins.

Before ascending, Jesus entrusts a most important mission to us:

We are to be witnesses to the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24).

We do this in three ways.

We must experience the love of God in and through the forgiveness of our sins. Pope Leo XIV (20 May 2025) cites St. Augustine:

How can we choose, unless we have first been chosen? We cannot love, unless someone has loved us first (Sermon, 34, 2).

With this experience of God living within us, we then announce the forgiveness of sins and communicate it:

The apostles and their successors carry out this ‘ministry of reconciliation,’ not only by announcing God’s forgiveness merited for us by Christ, … but also by communicating to them the forgiveness of sins in Baptism (CCC 981).

It may be that we have a friend, colleague, family member who could do with us whispering in their ear that God loves and forgives them.

We announce with love.

Maybe they have not been baptised or have not confessed their sins for some time.

We accompany them to the baptismal font or the confessional:

There is no offense [sin], however serious, that the Church cannot forgive (CCC 982).

Amen.