Quotes about Absolution

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. Charge it to our heads and not our hearts, as the elders in black churches have long said.

Trouble me not, friar, I have confessed my sins to God, and obtained absolution through the merits of Jesus Christ.

Absolve me, teach me, purify me, strengthen me: take me to Thyself, that I may be Thine and Thine only.

We must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness.

Confession is the God-given remedy for self-deception and self-indulgence. When we confess our sins before a brother-Christian, we are mortifying the pride of the flesh and delivering it up to shame and death through Christ. Then through the word of absolution we rise as new men, utterly dependent on the mercy of God. Confession is thus a genuine part of the life of the saints, and one of the gifts of grace.

To remember no more is God's way of expressing absolute forgiveness.

Forgotten is forgiven.

For hence it is that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him by God, by whose merit apprehended by faith he is absolved from his sins and obtains a right to life" (1992, 16.9). Faith is thus "the instrumental cause of our justification" (1992, 16.7) and by implication of our union with Christ. Hence, believers have "immediate and absolute union" with Christ (1992, 18.25).