Easter Season and Divine Mercy

The Good News of Jesus’ resurrection overcomes the despair of His passion and death. Over the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost the daily reading from the Acts of the Apostles and all four gospels cite numerous historical accounts of people who encountered the risen Christ.
In the first days and weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples were confused and could not comprehend what had happened, or why it happened. Jesus Himself explained how the Old Testament scriptures foretold his suffering and death when He walked the road to Emmaus with several of His disciples who were getting out of town after the crucifixion. Over the course of the next several weeks scripture will recount other instructions Jesus gave to the Apostles leading up to their reception of the Holy Spirit. For example, on the second Sunday of the Easter Season, designated as Divine Mercy Sunday, we heard this account:
“On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, "Peace be with you."
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
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 20:19-22)
Jesus’ opening remark was to offer them peace which He repeated again when He declared that He was sending them, just as the Father had sent Him. What was He sending them to do? His very next words were, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” He instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In offering this Sacrament, the Church is abiding by the direction given directly from Christ Himself. In His Divine Mercy, God loves us despite our sinfulness and He not only forgives us, but has given us a means by which to express our sorrow and hear the words of forgiveness spoken to us by a priest who is following the direct command of the resurrected Jesus. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is more important than ever, despite declining participation rates in a world fraught with stress and anxiety. People will spend a small fortune to have their subconscious probed and prodded by a psychologist, but they are unwilling to perform a sincere examination of their conscience.

In his wonderful book, Peace of Soul, Archbishop Fulton Sheen devotes a chapter to the comparison of psychoanalysis to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This is no simplistic contrast because Sheen was highly educated, and held several Ph Ds, including one in Philosophy from the prestigious Louvain University in Belgium where he studied psychology in depth and graduated with a “super-doctorate” and the highest distinction for his academic accomplishments. He was very well versed in the psychology of Freud, Adler, Jung and many others, including those who advocated the notion that the repression of our appetites were the cause of mental illness and believed the solution was to be found in abolishing moral restraint on man’s freedom to act on his instincts. Bishop Sheen on the other hand, believed that our destructive instincts should be suppressed but knowledge of our faults should not. He wrote, “Individuals who have reversed this healthy rule have invariably wound up many times more neurotic than before; indeed, the suppression of the ethical self to permit untrammeled indulgence of the animal self is one of the principal causes of mental disorders in modern man.”
Jesus of course knew that repressing our sins is unhealthy. If we cover them up they cause an irritation with eternal consequences, so He instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation by directing His apostles and their successors to travel about the world hearing confessions and forgiving sins in His name. Bishop Sheen points out that guilt is moral, not physiological. No animal experiences guilt and therefore it cannot be known objectively or scientifically. He pointed out that some psychoanalysts presume that the individual is blameless and can be cured by discovering repressed memories of childhood, and by liberating themselves from unhealthy moral constraints. Sheen on the other hand believed that:
“Human beings need to be put together more than they need to be taken apart. Sin divides us against ourselves; absolution restores our unity. Most people today have a load on their minds because they have a load on their consciences; the Divine Psychologist know how miserable we would be if we could not unload that burden. Regular confession prevents our sins, our worries and our fears, and our anxieties from seeping into the unconscious and degenerating into melancholy, psychosis and neuroses. The Divine Master knew what is in man, so He instituted this Sacrament, not for His needs, but for ours. It was His way of giving man a happy heart.”Bishop Sheen was not the first Catholic to recognize the importance of confession to healthy mental states. Seven hundred years ago, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Any idea that is hurtful to the mind does harm in the proportion that it is repressed. The reason is this: the mind is more intent on a repressed idea than if it were brought to the surface and allowed to escape.” Long before Aquinas, the Church knew how important Confession was to the relief of hidden anxieties, thus serving the purpose of preventing it from “seeping into our subconscious” and to make us aware of the need to amend our sinful ways and restore ourselves on the path of healthy living.

Today, our society and many in the field of psychology advocate freedom of expression, even when it is contrary to nature and nature’s laws. Rather than acknowledge the laws of nature as created by God, we are encouraged to tolerate those who demand complete freedom, even those actions that are contrary to nature and have obvious consequences that damage the individual, families and society. Such an attitude breeds anxiety and discontent because of the abandonment of self to our biological and animal instincts. Ironically, freedom is destroyed when the person becomes enslaved in destructive habits, whether they be brought about by gluttony, lust, avarice or selfishness. A person mired in such sinful habits falls into sorrow and despair because there is never enough to satisfy their appetites. The reason for these insatiable desires is that we have been created to desire infinite goodness and love and earthly pleasures will never fully satisfy that desire.

Our Church has never taught that man is comprised of only two levels of consciousness, but rather that there are three levels imbedded in our nature: body (conscious), soul (subconscious) and spirit (the desire for God). Bishop Sheen pointed out that happiness consists in overcoming the bias to evil by realizing our divine vocation and by overcoming the urges of nature. He explained that there is nothing inherently wrong with our instincts or appetites, but only with the abuse of them.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a great gift, given to us directly by Jesus Himself. He affords us the opportunity to reflect on the morality of our actions, and if we are truly repentant, gives us not only His forgiveness, but the grace to amend our lives and practice the self-discipline that will lead to health of body, soul and spirit. This is the path to peace of soul, not because of any action on our part alone, but because of the Divine Mercy of God.