Fr. Basilio Az Cuc (foreground) and Fr. Tom Buckman (background) hear confessions on Nov. 23, 2024 during Owensboro Diocese Youth Conference in Hopkinsville. RILEY GREIF | WKC
Beginning again: This Holy Year, let us encounter God’s grace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
We have begun the Holy Year 2025. Pope Francis inaugurated this time of grace on Christmas Eve when he ceremonially opened the Holy Year door of St. Peter’s Basilica. Even in the first few days of the New Year, hundreds of thousands of visitors and pilgrims entered the basilica through these doors in keeping with a tradition dating back hundreds of years – ritually observing to follow the way of Jesus Christ.
Most of us will not have an opportunity to travel to Rome and visit the Church’s major basilicas during this Holy Year. But be assured that this symbolic step is not the only door by which we might experience the grace of this special year. Pope Francis has called upon all the faithful to see in this year that lays before us a “moment of grace and an invitation to begin again.”
“Beginning again” is at the heart of the tradition of Holy Years. However faithful and good a person might be, we all recognize sin and bad habits that can be remedied. The practice of new year’s resolutions and Lenten promises speak to the human recognition of opportunities to start over, to do better, to grow in virtue.
One door through which we might all pass in our desire to “begin again” is available to us through the sacraments. The Holy Father has specifically called for Catholics to seek out the Sacrament of Reconciliation during this special time. Perhaps you confess your sins regularly. The Holy Year is an opportunity to approach this with greater fervor and humility. Many Catholics have gotten away from the practice of regular confession. During the Holy Year perhaps we can commit to entering this extraordinary door of grace.
The apostle John, in addressing the early Christians, wrote, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and truth is not in us.” The Lord himself taught us to pray: “Forgive us our trespasses,” linking our forgiveness of one another’s offenses to the forgiveness of our sin that God will grant us.
The Church recognizes many and various ways that the Christian encounters the grace of God’s mercy and forgiveness. We observe special days and seasons of penance in the course of the year and have available intense moments of healing and mercy. In but a few weeks, we will open the door of grace given us in the season of Lent where the Church calls us to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Conversion and forgiveness are accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, seeking justice, and admission of faults to others. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is a sure way of penance.
Every time we receive the Holy Eucharist we pray, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof but only say the word and my soul will be healed.”
Sin is before all else an offense against God, a rupture of communion with him. Conversion, then, entails forgiveness and reconciliation with God and the Church and these are encountered richly in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
As this Holy Year unfolds, I encourage everyone to plan to confess your sins in this extraordinary sacrament. During confession, we receive the absolution offered by the priest: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit upon us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the church may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Having been absolved, the penitent completes the sacrament by solemnly making an Act of Contrition and then fulfilling a penance.
Having passed through this door of grace, we may surely encounter the special blessings of this Holy Year.
Sincerely Yours in Christ,
Most Reverend William F. Medley
Diocese of Owensboro
Originally printed in the February 2025 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
