Testimony: Cardinal Dolan Calls Penance the Sacrament of the New Evangelization and How I Know He is Right

10/25/2012

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at the High Mass growing up in Dorchester, Massachusetts - and when, because Sister William Patricia told me that Jesus was my friend, I visited Him in Church every day and even spoke openly to Him when I walked alone. I wanted Him again.. even closer to me than in those days as a child.

So, on a beach in Santa Cruz, California, prompted by my friend's invitation in that letter, (forwarded to me from my worried parents), I, his gentile "nominally Catholic" friend, cried out to Jesus Christ. They were simple words from a pure and desperate young heart- "Jesus, I use to know you, I want to know you again, please come into my heart, forgive me of my sins, and be my Savior and Lord!" He heard my cry!

With that simple prayer of sincere contrition and acceptance, I gave myself back to the One, in whom and for whom I had been created and into whom I had been baptized as a child. It was a conversion moment, a personal "new Evangelization" of sorts. However, I would quickly discover, at a deep place inside of my heart, that the Lord had never left me. Years after that encounter, I read these timeless words of St. Augustine, taken from his Confessions:

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me and I burned for your peace."

I then began to understand that this was my own experience of the same timeless Lord who continues to remind all who will listen: "You did not choose me, but I chose you." (John 15:16) That summer, after returning from this cross-country pilgrimage, I moved in with two other young men my age. Both were evangelical Protestant Christians. I was a Christian---but not yet sure what kind. Because I wanted to continue to grow in my walk with the Lord, I attended a prayer meeting with my new roommates and began to study the New Testament. My passionate love for the Sacred Scripture even prompted me to join one of them and enroll in a local Protestant Bible College as a student.

I was a fish out of water. The culture of the place was foreign to me. I was a Catholic guy from the inner city of Boston. I did not understand the odd popular language so many of the students and staff used when discussing their faith. I also could not understand why many of them prayed in a different language then they talked. Or other simple things, like the seeming disdain for ordinary human enjoyment. Was I missing something? Did my newly rediscovered relationship with the One who was fully human, and fully divine, mean that I was to lose my own humanity? I knew that could not be true. I also missed the deep worship of my childhood where I experienced, in a profound way, the transcendent majesty of God, at the Altar in every Mass.

Because of my passionate hunger for truth I found myself, though respectful of the instructors, doubting and hungering for more than they were offering in their classes. I simply could not check my brain at the classroom door. I wanted answers and I never felt that my sincere inquiries should be cast aside as some sort of temptation. I began to discern that the road of conversion was a lifelong path. I had a long way to travel. My pilgrimage was not over, but in fact, had only begun. The hunger for God, rekindled in my soul during that encounter on the beach, was insatiable. I also continued to experience the guilt of my wrong choices, my sins. Oh, I was aware that I had been forgiven. However, I didn't feel forgiven. Something was missing.

I started pouring over the books in that Bible College library -wanting to know about the history of the Christian Church. I found an inconsistency in the literalist approach I was being taught in the New Testament class. It seemed that Jesus meant everything He said except His explicit words concerning the Eucharist or the "Lord's supper" as the instructor called it. Though Jesus Himself said it was His Body and Blood, right in the biblical text, He somehow didn't mean it. I could not accept this meager dismissal of something so profound.

I also began to hear increasing disparagement of the Catholic Church in some classes. It did not comport with my experience as a child, my growing convictions about the Christian life or my fledging study of Christian history. I hungered for the truth and continued, as had been my lifelong habit, to devour books. At that time, the Bible College library was stocked with the ...
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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Cardinal Dolan, New Evangelization, Synod, Penance, conversion, holiness, freedom, born again, Deacon Keith Fournier

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1 - 6 of 6 Comments

Andrew M. Greenwell
6 months ago
What a lovely story. I appreciate you sharing it with your readers (which includes me!).
Adam Hordos
6 months ago
I am coming up to age 65 and have yet to have somebody explain to me what penance is nowhere in your message brother Deacon do you give examples. All those years taught in catechism nothing. I think this new evangelization is a smoke screen for all the underlying problems with our Universal Church. "Transparency" should be the new norm. when you have so much secrecy in a Church which I am a baptized member, what are all the innuendos, supposition,suspicion, about. When Jesus instituted our Church he did it openly. He said himself if there was anything else I would have told you. The next conclave for choosing a new pope must be done in public we need to know who these Cardinals are.

When our beloved Clergy tell us we must except Vatican 11, lets go back open the books and let us see what transpired. Take a look what has transpired. Take a look and stop deceiving ourselves that everything is okay. I will follow my parish priest and do as he says but with a very heavy heart. What is scarey is that when I look throughout the world I do not see any, mother Theressa, Padre Pio's.etc.

Come lord Jesus come and renew the face off the earth come quickly.

Holy Micheal the archangel..........
Terri Kimmel
6 months ago
What beautiful and inspiring story. I have said before, and it's worth saying again: The nicest thing anybody has ever said to me is, "I absolve you from yours sins."
Dr. Ray
6 months ago
Does this apply to the Cardinal and the others bishops who have never spokenout truthfully about artificial contraception?
SaraPalen
6 months ago
thanks for the comments, Deacon.
It had been about ten years before I had made a good confession. But as Fulton Sheen had once said, I felt like the woman at the well with Jesus. Being a bow hunter, I can understand the meaning of this "missing the mark", sin. It is much more more painful. I once shot at a deer who may have flinched as she was looking right at me when I took my shot, My husband ended up shooting her a month later during rifle season, as the kids were then calling her Holy Mama). And what you said, and what St. Augustine said is on the mark. It is like you want to breath in His presence, take it all in. But it is so hot we cannot do it all at once, and we sin and miss our mark. What happens during pennance is more beautiful than the brush in the hand of any of the most famous of earthly painters or sculpturs.
Anthony Coffey
6 months ago
REPENTANCE

It would seem that some have lost the sense of sin and the need to repent.

Repentance is a hatred of sin because it is an offence to God.
The motive for repenting is love of God. To repent of evil doing, because of mental suffering, or social loss, is not sincere repentance, because it is selfish, e.g. Judas Iscariot repented to the High Priests, by returning the thirty pieces of silver he had been paid for betraying Christ. He was not motivated by his love for God, but by his self disgust, for having betrayed Christ.

Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of paradise, because sin cannot coexist with God. While God is infinitely merciful, God has no tolerance of sin. To enter Heaven we must be sincere in repentance. It is noteworthy that Adam sinned [disobedience] because he feared God would take Eve, and leave him alone in the garden, therefore he valued companionship more than his love for God…impossible for Adam to repent at this time. For the Soul to be truly repentant it must be sincere, with a resolve not to sin again. Self - denial, i.e. Penance, shows sincerity to God. The effect of sincere repentance is peace and calm of conscience with intense consolation of soul.

The soul is reconciled to God by true repentance, which means confessing all mortal sins done by the penitent; repentance is made void, by refusing to admit a particular sin.
Some people experience great distress and anxiety wanting to confess their sins to a person strong enough to listen and understand, and not to despise them for the sins they have done. We are not ashamed to sin, but often we are ashamed to confess. It is vital for salvation that we obtain forgiveness of sins through the Sacrament of reconciliation.
Repentance is always necessary to be reconciled to God.

When Adam and Eve sinned they tried to hide from the Creator, because of self disgust guilt and remorse but they were unrepentant, they blamed. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the devil in the form of a serpent. The reason for their denial was fear, fear of the consequences of having offended God. Their denial meant loss of Paradise because whenever in the future, if they sinned, they would deny.

This harsh chastisement was necessary to prove positive repentance in the future, in the hope, on reflection they would admit to having sinned. So began a history of relationship between God and Man culminating in the gift of the Church to the followers of Christ, this wonderful gift of Christ included the power to forgive sins.
It is the natural state of Man to sin, that is why we need to define Human Rights, if it is not a sin, then it is a Right. However the Sacrament of Reconciliation helps us to overcome our nature and achieve holiness of not sinning.

Luke 15:7.

“There is more joy in Heaven when one sinner repents, than ninety nine just people doing good deeds, who have no need of repentance”
John 20. 22-23.

When he had said this , He breathed on them; and He said to them, receive the
Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain,
they are retained.

John 8 : 3-11.

And the Scribes and the Pharisees bring a Woman to him who had been caught in the act of Adultery and they placed her in the middle of the gathering.

And they said to him: Master, this woman has just been caught in the act of adultery, and according to the law she should be stoned to death for this sin, but what do you say ?

They said this to trap him so that they could accuse him of disagreeing with Moses.

Christ leaned down and wrote with his finger on the ground saying:
Let him among you that is without sin throw the first stone.
Then beginning with the eldest they all walked away.

He then lifted himself up and said to her, where are they that accused thee ? has no man condemned thee ? She replied no man, neither will I, but go now and sin no more.

Matthew 5. 27-28.

You have heard that it was commanded to them of old: Thou will not commit the sin of adultery, but I say to you that who ever looks at a woman to lust after her, has already done the sin of adultery in his heart

SAINT JOHN 6 : 47.

Amen, amen I say to you: those that believe in me, have everlasting Life.

I am the bread of life.

Your fathers did eat manna in the desert but are now dead.

This is the bread that has come down from Heaven, whoever eats, will not die.

I am the living bread who has come down from Heaven.

Whoever eats this bread, will live forever; and the bread that I will give, is my Flesh, for the life of the world.

The Jews argued among themselves saying: how can this man give us his flesh to eat ?

Then Christ spoke to them again: Amen, I am telling you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of man, and drink his Blood, you will not have Life in you.

Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood, has everlasting Life: and I will raise them up on their last day.

Because my Flesh is food indeed; and my Blood is drink indeed.

Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood lives in me, and I in them.

As the living Father has sent me, and I live in the Father, therefore, they that eat me, will also live in the Father.

This is the bread, which came down from Heaven. Not as your fathers ate the manna in the desert and are now dead, but whoever eats this bread will live forever.

QUESTIONS

[1] What is everlasting life ? Does life live forever ?

[2] “The bread of life” what is bread ? does bread have life ? what is life ?

[3] Those that ate the manna in the desert are dead, what does Christ mean ?

[4] To explain who he is Christ states: “Living bread from Heaven” [explain]

[5] “Whoever eats this bread will live forever” [explain]

[6] “And the bread that I will give” [When, explain]

[7] Why did the Jews not believe Christ ?

[8] “And the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world” [explain]

[9] “Amen I am telling you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his Blood, you will not have life in you” does this mean we are dead without the sacrament ?

[10] “And I will raise them up on their last day” what happens to others ? [explain]

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