Evangelization and the Sacrament of Penance

Abstract

The new cultural scenarios which are more and more secularized, very plural and strongly influenced by the digital culture, in front of old and new challenges require the precise choices in life, in particular the Christian one. Let us usk, what place does the Christian faith occupy in them? This question deserves an adequate answer that the Church intends to offer by proposing a renewal of the ecclesial journey that focuses on the evangelization of cultures but also of Christian life itself and of sacramental pastoral care. This contribution highlights the ancient and ever new relationship between evangelization and the sacrament of Penance, framing it in the intrinsic connection between Word of God and Sacrament, between faith and the sacraments of faith that innervate the concrete Christian experience of individuals and communities. In this scenario, the Sacrament of Penance, adequately evangelized, understood and well celebrated, plays a twofold role: that of making practicable the merciful love of God that prevents, welcomes, forgives and restores life, and the more specifically “missionary” role that translates the witness of a renewed and merciful life of the penitent into an authentic evangelizing action, the heart of which is represented by the message of the revolution of divine tenderness that makes all things new. Individual believers and communities draw from the Sacrament of Penance the strength of God’s merciful love, which heals and resurrects, and re-proposes the Christian life as the most beautiful adventure to be experienced, since forgiveness asked for and received becomes the highest school where love is welcomed as a gift which, in turn, must always be given.