Vatican cardinal encourages priest-confessors to serve 'mystery of mercy'
December 22, 2015
In a Christmas message to the world’s priest-confessors, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary writes that every sacramental confession anticipates the Final Judgment.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza says that the faithful will be judged, at the end of their lives, not on “abstractly understood moral behavior” but “according to the truth of Christ, the truth of our love for Him.”
For fallen humans, this love is always a “wounded love, polluted by sin,” Cardinal Piacenza continues. But Jesus Christ is “the mystery of mercy, and He, when recognized and welcomed, makes men free to love truly.”
Confession, the cardinal writes, offers an encounter with the “great truth of the mystery of Christ: the truth of his mercy.” He encourages priests to embrace their role as confessors, recognizing that through their ministry they can offer “the only true peace which the world truly needs.”
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