Reconciliation/Confession

Christ has willed that in its prayer and life and action, his whole church should be the sign and instrument of the forgiveness and reconciliation that he acquired for us at the price of his blood. But he entrusted the exercise of the power of absolution to the apostolic ministry which he charged with the ‘ministry of reconciliation’. . . . During his public life, Jesus not only forgave sins, but he also made plain the effect of this forgiveness: he reintegrated forgiven sinners into the community of the people of God from which sin had alienated them or even excluded them. A remarkable sign of this is the fact that Jesus receives sinners at his table, a gesture that expresses in an astonishing way both God’s forgiveness and the return to the bosom of the people of God.