The season of Lent…

                            

…is especially suitable for the celebration of the sacrament of penance, for on Ash Wednesday the faithful are admonished: ‘Repent and believe the Gospel.’ It is appropriate, therefor, to arrange for frequent penitential services during Lent, so that all the faithful might be offered the opportunity of being reconciled to God and their brothers and of celebrating the Paschal mystery with renewed heart during the holy triduum.

 

New Order of Penance (13)

The Gift of Love

13 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 10 but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The presentation of Jesus

The presentation of Jesus in the temple shows him to be the firstborn Son who belongs to the Lord ( Cf. Lk 2:22-39; Ex 13:2, 12-13). With Simeon and Anna, all Israel awaits its encounter with the Savior-the name given to this event in the Byzantine tradition. Jesus is recognized as the long-expected Messiah, the “light to the nations” and the “glory of Israel”, but also “a sign that is spoken against”. The sword of sorrow predicted for Mary announces Christ’s perfect and unique oblation on the cross that will impart the salvation God had “prepared in the presence of all peoples”.

Source: 529 CCC

Why a sacrament of reconciliation after baptism?

“YOU were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”(1 Cor 6:11) One must appreciate the magnitude of the gift God has given us in the sacraments of Christian initiation in order to grasp the degree to which sin is excluded for him who has “put on Christ.”(Gal 3:27) But the apostle John also says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”(1 Jn 1:8) And the Lord himself taught us to pray: “Forgive us our trespasses,”(Cf Lk 11:4;Mt 6:12) linking our forgiveness of one another’s offenses to the forgiveness of our sins that God will grant us.

Conversion to Christ, the new birth of Baptism, the gift of the Holy Spirit and the Body and Blood of Christ received as food have made us “holy and without blemish,” just as the Church herself, the Bride of Christ, is “holy and without blemish.”(Eph 1:4; 5:27) Nevertheless the new life received in Christian initiation has not abolished the frailty and weakness of human nature, nor the inclination to sin that tradition calls concupiscence, which remains in the baptized such that with the help of the grace of Christ they may prove themselves in the struggle of Christian life.(Cf. Council of Trent 1546; Denzinger-Schonmetzer 1515) This is the struggle of conversion directed toward holiness and eternal life to which the Lord never ceases to call us.(Cf. Council of Trent 1547: DS 1545; LG 40)

Source:1425-1426 Cathechism of  Catholic Church