The forgiveness of sins, said the Fathers of the Church, is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe. That seems exaggerated, when considered from our perspective. A Catholic does something he feels ashamed of, goes in the little room to confession, and comes out a few minutes later. Sometimes he stops for a quick penance prayer in the pew. Sometimes he’s off like a shot to his next Saturday afternoon appointment. To the naked eye, it’s hard to see this as something akin to God hurling the Andromeda Galaxy into being.
And yet, seen from God’s perspective, this is what it’s all about. The birth at Bethlehem; the life at near-subsistence level; the years of obscurity and hard manual labor; the temptation in the wilderness; the long days and months and years spent wandering and preaching with nowhere to lay his head; the growing hostility, the whispers; the friendship of Judas draining away and leaving only the husk of a smile behind; the incomprehension of the apostles; and, finally, the betrayal, arrest, beatings, crowning with thorns, nakedness, excruciating pain, gasping for breath, isolation, abandonment, and last wrenching moments of agony: It was all to purchase that miracle of forgiveness poured out in that little room, in the confessional.
In short, as C.S. Lewis has remarked, it cost God nothing to create nice things. It cost him crucifixion to convert rebellious wills.1 Those who think of absolution as a sort of magical wave of the hand accomplished with a little ooga booga and sprinkling with magic water simply have no conception of what the mercy really cost.
But why doesn’t God just do the magic and have done with it? He’s God, isn’t he? If he can speak being into existence, why can’t he speak forgiveness into existence without all this blood, smoke, and dust in the drama?
The answer of Catholic tradition is that forgiveness is like epoxy. It has two ingredients, and they must fuse to work. God has to be willing to forgive, but we need to be creatures capable of receiving the forgiveness. Our natures were deformed by the Fall, and the more deformed we are, the less we are capable of receiving what we need: the forgiveness and life of God.
That bit about the “life of God” is important. Because forgiveness is only step one of what God intends to give us. Christ is not merely about bringing our account balance back out of the red and back to zero. Rather, he means to make us into participants in the divine nature (see 2 Peter 1:4). Forgiveness of sins without divinization of the human person is just not in the cards in the Christian picture of salvation. We are saved not merely from sin but to communion with the Blessed Trinity.
That’s why God opted not to remain up in heaven and keep things nice and disincarnate. As Athanasius put it, he became man that man might become God.2 He assumed our humanity, not merely that he might put the sins of the flesh to death, but so that we might share completely in his divine life. It is this astonishing generosity to our radically unworthy species that the Exultet marvels at each Easter: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”
In the mystery of God’s incredible generosity, we find that God actually gives us something better than we would have received had we never sinned. It’s as if we robbed a man’s house and then found him chasing us down the street, insisting on giving us the jewelry we missed and begging us to marry his daughter. It brings to life in an astonishing way Jesus’ strange counsel that if somebody takes your tunic, give him your cloak as well (Matthew 5:40). God gave us his Son, and we killed him. As our reward, he gives us eternal bliss. No wonder Paul said the wisdom of God is foolishness to this world (see 1 Corinthians 1:18–21). It barely escapes being foolishness even to those who believe it.
Of which more next time.
(For more information, see my book THE WORK OF MERCY: BEING THE HANDS AND HEART OF CHRIST (available here, signed by me, or in Kindle format here, or as an audiobook here).
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