Today we must learn once more how to acknowledge guilt, we must
shake off the illusion of being innocent. We must learn how to do
penance, to let ourselves be transformed; to reach out to the other
and to let God give us the courage and strength for this renewal.
Today, in this world of ours, we need to rediscover the Sacrament of
Penance and Reconciliation. The fact that it has largely disappeared
from the daily life and habits of Christians is a symptom of a loss of
truthfulness with regard both to ourselves and to God; a loss that
endangers our humanity and diminishes our capacity for peace.
Saint Bonaventure was of the opinion that the Sacrament of Penance
was a sacrament of humanity as such, a sacrament that God had
instituted in its essence immediately after original sin through the
penance he imposed on Adam, even though it could only take on its
full shape in Christ, who is the reconciling power of God in person
and who took our penance upon himself. In fact, the unity of sin,
repentance and forgiveness is one of the fundamental conditions for
being truly human: these conditions find complete expression in the
sacrament, yet in their deepest roots they are part of the experience
of being human persons as such.
-Benedict XVI, Address to Roman Curia, 21 Dec 2009
Confession makes us more human
