Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the tenth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series
When early 20th-century English writer G.K. Chesterton was asked why he became Catholic, his answer was characteristically pithy: “To get rid of my sins.” While in an essay entitled, “Why I Am a Catholic,” he would articulate many reasons to become Catholic (which he said all amount to one reason: that Catholicism is true), the forgiveness of his sins was perhaps his most personal motivation for conversion.
The good news of Jesus Christ cannot be rightly understood apart from the concept of forgiveness. Through His passion and resurrection, Christ saves us from our sins and from the wages of sin, which is death (cf. Rom 6:23). One of the chief challenges for evangelists today is proclaiming this good news to a population who no longer believes in sin, at least of the personal sort. We have no problem accepting the idea of societal sins, such as racism, environmental exploitation, wars of aggression and unjust distribution of resources, but when it comes to personal morality, the general feeling is “I’m OK, you’re OK.” To each his own! Whatever floats your boat! The one personal sin we do recognize is the sin of judgmentalism, which curiously is found only in others.
Before we can talk about forgiveness in Christ, we need to establish what is being forgiven. Sin is defined in the Catechism as “an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience” and “a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (CCC 1849). There are multiple Hebrew words for sin used in Scripture, which may be translated into English as “iniquity,” “trespass” or “to fail.” The Hebrew word “hata” literally means “to miss the mark.”
This provides us with a good visual. Imagine you are an archer shooting at a target. You aim for the center, so anything other than a bullseye is missing the mark. But you can miss by varying degrees. Your arrow may land just a little off-center, missing the mark but still on target. If, on the other hand, you aim your arrow in the complete opposite direction of the target, not only will you miss, but you’re likely to cause serious harm by hitting something (or someone) you shouldn’t! Sin is like this, only the target we are aiming at is love. The bullseye is to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
All sin is a failure to love as we ought. When Adam and Eve trusted the serpent’s conniving words more than they trusted their Creator, that was a failure to love the God who made them. When Adam subsequently blamed Eve for his transgression, that was a failure to love his wife. When a man commits adultery that is a clear failure to love, but when he ignores his wife because of a “perverse attachment” to the football game he’s watching, that’s also a failure to love, but to a lesser degree. None of us consistently hits the bullseye of perfect divine love, and so “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This means we all need forgiveness.
But what does forgiveness gain for us? As sin is an offense against love, its negative effects damage our relationships. Serious sin can rupture relationships entirely. Forgiveness is necessary to restore those relationships.
Many erroneously equate forgiveness with the idea of “getting over” emotional harms. It can be hard to reconcile this with Jesus’ command to forgive, and with our need for forgiveness from God. When Jesus speaks about forgiveness in the gospels, he often uses the image of monetary debt. This makes the nature of forgiveness easier for us to understand. If I loan you $100 and you fail to pay it back, you have made me $100 poorer. That unresolved debt now hangs over our relationship like a dark shadow. By forgiving your debt, I accept the loss of $100 and release you from any expectation to pay it back. The act of forgiveness restores the borrower to good standing in the eyes of his debtor. Forgiving non-monetary offenses such as betrayal of trust or other kinds of personal harm works in the same way, even if you can’t put a dollar sign on it. To forgive means accepting the harm and letting go of any claim on repayment for the damage.
So why do we need forgiveness from God? Any time we act unjustly or unlovingly toward our neighbor it is also an offense against God, because we are made in God’s image and God commands us to love one another. Our sin does not harm God in the literal sense – God is perfect. But it does harm our relationship with God by turning our hearts away from His goodness (see CCC 1850). Only God can forgive the debt we owe for disobeying His divine will. This is why when Jesus tells the paralytic man that his sins are forgiven, the scribes accuse Him of blasphemy (Mt 9:3).
The scribes were correct that only God can forgive sins. They were incorrect in their understanding of who Jesus was (and is). Jesus healed the paralytic to show them that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mt 9:6). Jesus bestowed that same authority on the Apostles on the day of the resurrection, telling them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20:22-23).
The successors of the Apostles today continue to carry out this mission of mercy and forgiveness. We receive God’s forgiveness initially through baptism, which cleanses us of original sin, and subsequently through the sacrament of penance (confession) which reconciles us to the Father any time we repent of sins we have committed after baptism. Repentance means turning away from our sins and turning back to God and His goodness, which is what the Christian faith is all about – “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14).
Heaven is eternal union with God, which makes the forgiveness of sins essential to our salvation. As St. Augustine rightly preached, “Were there no forgiveness of sins in the Church, there would be no hope of life to come or eternal liberation. Let us thank God who has given His Church such a gift” (Sermon 213, as quoted in CCC 983).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.
Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the ninth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series.
When the English novelist Evelyn Waugh was asked why he was Catholic, he reportedly replied, “What else is there?” I believe I know what he meant. I had a “what else is there?” moment leading to my own conversion.
I was raised in a non-church-going family, so my introduction to the Catholic faith took place when I dated my wife, who was raised Catholic. I attended Mass with her at first because her faith was important to her, and she was important to me; but I was open to whatever truth and goodness was to be found there.
Being inquisitive, I began reading all I could about the Catholic Church, its history, teachings and traditions. At a certain point I came to understand that Jesus was a real historical figure, that the best accounts we have of His life are the four gospels, and that according to those gospels He established a Church with the authority to carry out His saving mission. To me, it seemed clear that if one wanted to be a Christian, one ought to join the Church that Christ established, and all the evidence I saw pointed to that being the Catholic Church.
I therefore found myself faced with a choice: become a Catholic or become an atheist. Protestantism was no longer a viable option for me as it lacked historical connection to Christ. Atheism offered me nothing, and seemed to require an even greater leap of faith to believe that the universe somehow brought itself into being out of nothingness, with no purpose. So I found myself, like Peter, looking at Jesus and saying, “Master, to whom shall we go?” (Jn 6:68). Or, as Evelyn Waugh succinctly put it, “What else is there?”
In response to Peter’s rhetorical question, Jesus reminds him, “Did I not choose you twelve?” (Jn 6:70). One of the identifying characteristics of the Church established by Christ is that it is built upon the foundation of the Apostles. Out of His many disciples, Jesus chose 12 as leaders of His Church (see Mt 10:1-4). He endowed them with certain authority, including the power to govern (Mt 16:19, 18:18), the power to teach in His name (Lk 10:16), and the power to forgive sins (Jn 20:23). While all the
Apostles received this governing, teaching and sanctifying authority, Peter also had the special role of “strengthening the brethren” (Lk 22:32). He alone was given the keys of the kingdom, signifying his chiefly office in the Church (Mt 16:18).
Jesus promised to be with the Church for all time (Mt 28:20), and that the power of death would not overcome it (Mt 16:18). This means that the Church Jesus established must still be around today. So which Church do we find that continues to govern with authority, has taught consistently in Christ’s name for the past 2,000 years, and sanctifies the faithful through the sacraments, united around the successor of St. Peter? It can be none other than the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” as the Creed states.
In Greek, the word for “church” is “ecclesia,” which means an assembly, or a calling out. This is the word used in the gospel when Jesus tells Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18). We have been called out from the world as followers of Jesus Christ. We are no longer citizens of the world, but of the kingdom of God. The word “catholic” comes from the Greek “katholikos” which means “of the whole” or “universal.” It signifies that the Church founded by Christ is not just for one people, tribe or nation, but for the whole world. This is why Christ commissioned the Church to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) and to be His witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The earliest recorded use of the name “Catholic Church” is found in St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Smyrnians (c. 110 AD). St. Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John and the successor of Peter in Antioch. Interestingly, it was also in Antioch that the disciples were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26).
There are two other names for the Catholic Church that speak to the Church’s identity and mission. The Church is called both the “Body of Christ” and the “Bride of Christ.” These names both speak to the same reality. The Church is Christ’s body precisely because she is His bride, and the “two have become one body” (see Gen 2:24). To be a member of the Body of Christ is to be a member of the same Body that suffered and died for the sake of the world. Therefore Christians are called to take up our cross daily and follow Christ (Lk 9:23). It is also the same Body that rose from the tomb and ascended into heaven. Therefore the sure hope of Christians is in the Resurrection. “If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we persevere we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim 2:11b-12a).
We are wedded to Christ through our participation in the sacraments. We are incorporated into His Body in baptism, we receive His Spirit in confirmation, and we are nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. These sacred signs are the means given to us by Christ of being grafted onto Him, just as branches are grafted onto a vine and receive life from the vine. The life we receive from Christ is nothing other than the divine life of sanctifying grace.
Union with God is the essence of heaven, as we shall see as we approach the end of this series on the Creed. This is why the Church teaches that “outside the Church there is no salvation.”
This does not mean one must be a registered member of a Roman Catholic parish to be saved. But it does mean that there is no salvation outside of God’s grace, and God’s grace comes to us, however it comes, only through Jesus Christ. Anyone who receives it therefore is a part of Christ and a member of His Body, the Church. Jesus tells us, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).
In other words: what else is there?
— Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.