By Emily Mendez
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins” (cf. CCC 976-987)
One of the greatest gifts we can have in life are good friends and no one has better friends than the paralyzed man in the gospel whose friends make a hole in the roof and lower him down to Jesus (Mark 2:3-12, Luke 5:17-26, and Matthew 9:1-8). Honestly, they get even more than they probably were looking for.
First, they likely had heard about Jesus’ miracles and hoped that he would heal their friend physically. They go to great lengths to overcome the crowd and put their friend in front of Jesus. However, the first thing Jesus says to him is not to heal his physical disabilities. First Jesus says, “Child, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5).
How scandalous! Only God can forgive sins! The scribes were outraged! Jesus said, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’? ‘But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth’— he said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home’” (Mark 2:9-11).
Jesus works the miracle of physical healing to help them believe in the forgiveness of sins. How often do I pray for the miracle of physical healing and neglect the more important forgiveness of sins? Everywhere we turn there is another need to pray for, just like the paralyzed man in the Gospel story. We are quick to pray for someone that is sick, suffering or dying, and we should pray for healing. But, we cannot neglect the forgiveness of sins because the death caused by sin is even greater since it is eternal.
When we pray for physical healing, God does not always heal how we would like him to do so. Sometimes, from my limited human perspective, God’s will seems so complex and hard to understand when someone is suffering or when someone dies. In contrast, what isn’t hard to understand is God’s gift of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus gave us the tremendous gift of making access to his forgiveness easy and straightforward.
The Church ministers the Sacrament of Baptism, the first and most essential step in receiving Jesus’ forgiveness of sins. Then, as we live our Christian lives, the Sacrament of Reconciliation offers over and over again as many times as we need it the moment of forgiveness just like the paralyzed man in the Gospel received. The beauty of Reconciliation is we don’t have to wait for it (unless there’s a line!), it is always available (whenever the priest is available), it is totally free and we receive full and complete forgiveness of all our sins when the priest says those beautiful words, “I absolve you from your sins…”
Jesus gave this ministry to the apostles and their successors when he appeared to them after his resurrection: “(Jesus) said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained’” (John 20:21-23).
What God always does, without fail, is offer us forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This is truly the greatest and most precious gift we can ever receive and it is always available and always free! We only need to be sorry for our sins and go to Reconciliation to ask for it! What a gift!