Our God is a God of second chances. With steadfast love that never ceases, and mercies new each morning (see Lamentations 3:22-23), Jesus calls us daily to conversion and repentance of our sins.
How do we effectively show repentance to receive Christ’s healing mercy? By possessing contrite hearts, moved by grace in response to His love, and availing ourselves to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation (CCC, 1427-1428). Desiring this Sacrament, we demonstrate our heart’s conversion.
Effects of Reconciliation
Christ appoints His apostolic priesthood as His ministers of reconciliation, and He appeals to us through them for our hearts to turn back to Him (CCC, 1441-1442). In return, God replaces our hardened, stony hearts with new hearts through this holy Sacrament and grants us His forgiveness (CCC, 1432).
By reconciling ourselves with God, we likewise reconcile ourselves with His Church—just as Christ reintegrates sinners back into the community of God’s people following forgiveness of their sins in the New Testament (CCC, 1443). Says the Church:
Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil. . . At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace.[1]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1431
Trust in His Mercy
Ardently desiring our trust in His vast mercy, Our Lord tells St. Faustina:
When a soul sees and realizes the gravity of its sins, when the whole abyss of misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother. These souls have a right of priority to My compassionate Heart, they have first access to My mercy. Tell them that no soul that has called upon My mercy has been disappointed or brought to shame. I delight particularly in a soul which has placed its trust in My goodness.
Divine Mercy In My Soul: Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1541
God of Second Chances and Beyond…
Faithful throughout all generations, God desires to grant mercy and forgiveness to us when we separate ourselves from Him via sin. “No soul that has approached Me has ever gone away unconsoled,” He tells St. Faustina (DIARY, #1777). Holding out hope to us for a new beginning, Christ adds, “The soul which will trust in My mercy is most fortunate, because I myself take care of it . . . I am more generous toward sinners than toward the just. It was for their sake that I came down from heaven; it was for their sake that My Blood was spilled. Let them not fear to approach Me . . . All misery gets buried in the depths of My mercy” (DIARY, #1273, #1275, #1777).
Even after repentance God does not leave us orphans as we try to navigate living a holier lifestyle. “God gives us the strength to begin anew,” says the Church, equipping us with both His grace and the immense power and gift of the Holy Spirit, the Consoler (emphasis added; CCC, 1432-1433).
[1] Catholic Church. (1997). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed., p. 360). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
