The whole history of Jesus Christ is marked by mercy and compassion for suffering humanity. From the moment of His incarnation till the hour of His death every thought and word and act of His Divine life was directed toward the alleviation of the ills and miseries of fallen man.
As soon as He enters on His public career He goes about doing good to all men. He gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, vigor to paralyzed limbs; He applies the salve of comfort to the bleeding heart and raises the dead to life.
But, while Jesus occupied Himself in bringing relief to corporal infirmities, the principal object of His mission was to release the soul from the bonds of sin. The very name of Jesus indicates this important truth: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus,” says the angel, “for He shall save His people from their sins.”[435]
For, if Jesus had contented Himself with healing the maladies of our body without attending to those of our soul, He would deserve, indeed, to be called our Physician, but would not merit the more endearing titles of Savior and Redeemer. But as sin was the greatest evil of man, and as Jesus came to remove from us our greatest evils, He came into the world chiefly as the great Absolver from sin.
Magdalen seems to have a consciousness of this. She casts herself at His feet, which she washes with her tears and wipes with her hair, while Jesus pronounces over her the saving words of absolution. The very demons recognized Jesus as the enemy of sin, for they dreaded His approach, knowing that He would drive them out of the bodies of men.
Our Lord makes the healing of the body secondary to that of the soul. When He delivers the body from its distempers His object is to win the confidence of the spectators by compelling them to recognize Him as the soul's Physician. He says, for instance, to the palsied man, “Thy sins are forgiven.”[436] The scribes are offended at our Savior for presuming to forgive sins. He replies, in substance: If you do not believe My words, believe My acts; and He at once heals the man of his disease. After he had cured the man that had been languishing for thirty-eight years He whispered to him this gentle admonition, “Sin no more, lest some worst thing may happen to thee.”[437]
As much as our spiritual substance excels the flesh that surrounds it, so much more did our Savior value the resurrection of a soul from the grave of sin than the resurrection of the body from that of death. Hence St. Augustine pointedly remarks [pg 341] that, while the Gospel relates only three resurrections of the body, our Lord, during His mortal life, raised thousands of souls to the life of grace.
As the Church was established by Jesus Christ to perpetuate the work which he had begun, it follows that the reconciliation of sinners to God was to be the principal office of sacred ministers.
But the important question here presents itself: How was man to obtain forgiveness in the Church after our Lord's ascension?
Was Jesus Christ to appear in person to every sinful soul and say to each penitent, as He said to Magdalen, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” or did He intend to delegate this power of forgiving sins to ministers appointed for that purpose?