Quotes about Absolution

His confession is said to have taken three days to make, and he received absolution from one of the monks there. He exchanged his nobleman's dress for the simple outfit of a poor pilgrim and made a night vigil

We surely have no reason to be at odds with God. He gave us His holy Baptism, His Word, the Sacrament, the Office of the Keys, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Who then can say that we receive anything but sheer grace, love, and comfort from Him? If He promises us Christ's blood and death in Baptism and, by means of this, forgiveness of sin and absolution; if He closes hell and opens heaven for us, what animosity or displeasure toward us can there be in Him?

To put it more plainly, suppose a small group of earnest Christian laymen were taken prisoner and settled in the middle of the desert without any episcopally ordained priest among them; and they then agreed to choose one of themselves, whether married or not, and endow him with the office of baptizing, administering the sacrament, pronouncing absolution, and preaching; that man would be as truly a priest as if he had been ordained by all the bishops and the popes.

and the idols will vanish completely.

Psycho-analysis — that is... confession without absolution.

When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

And all he could say was that he did not know. He was guilty, therefore, of innocence. Was there anything so loathsome as a willfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore unworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.

That as he knew his obligation to love GOD in all things, and as he endeavored so to do, he had no need of a director to advise him, but that he needed much a Confessor to absolve him. That he was very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged by them; that he confessed them to GOD, but did not plead against Him to excuse them. When he had so done, he peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration.

Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: Forgive us our debts, because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable. Mercy brings us to the miracle of apology, given and accepted, to unashamed humility when we have erred or forgotten.