Overview:

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Do not neglect the gift you have,
which was conferred on you through the prophetic word
with the imposition of hands by the presbyterate. (1 Tim 4:14)

Find today’s readings here.

What does “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, by his authority, I forgive you of all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” mean when it is said by a non-Catholic? 

How does a Catholic priest end up with the power to forgive sins but no other people do? 

Recently, I went to a Lutheran church for a service and spent much of the time thinking about apostolic succession, the priesthood and the magisterium. As a cradle Catholic, I can count on one hand the number of times I have been to non-Catholic churches, so it was interesting to visit there with my now-Catholic boyfriend’s Lutheran family. (I will not pretend to know everything about the Missouri Synod!)

In today’s first reading, Paul reminds Timothy of his role as pastor of the people in Ephesus, where he must teach the people about the Gospel. Paul tells him this not just because he is a Christian living there, but because he has been given the “gift” of the laying on of hands through the “prophetic word.” He must act as a priest should, exemplifying Christ in his life and thus saving himself and his flock in the process.

This is what became our sacrament of Holy Orders, where a priest is ordained by someone who was ordained by someone…all the way back to the apostles. If you know which bishop ordained your local priest, you can see who ordained whom dating back hundreds of years! 

Jesus gave the apostles the ability to forgive sins, as well as to teach and celebrate the Eucharist, and they passed it on to their successors, like Timothy in today’s reading, and Father Chuck at my church and Father Jim at yours. There is a long line of history that allows our priests to celebrate the Mass and forgive sins. 

I do not seek to bash Lutherans and their beliefs or to explain their whole religion—as Christians, we all believe in the same God, and their service was really pretty similar to a Mass, with a shorter liturgy of the Eucharist and a few other changes—but simply to contemplate the gift of the sacrament of Holy Orders and the magisterium of the Church that makes Catholic priesthood possible. Lutherans, who have ordained ministers, do not have Holy Orders in the same sacramental way that Catholics do, and the sacrament of reconciliation (and thus forgiveness of sins from someone in persona Christi) is not possible. 

That one extra step, wherein a priest absolves us of our sins at the beginning of Mass, is not present at the Lutheran service because there, although the pastor said that he acted in the name of Jesus to forgive sins, the pastor only declares that sins are forgiven by God. The Catholic priest acts in the person of Christ, speaking with Jesus present behind his words, while the Lutheran pastor relays the message as an ambassador of Christ. The difference is slight but meaningful.

The next time I went to Mass (later that day), I found I was picking out the many similarities to the service I had attended earlier, but I was extra grateful for the priest’s great homily, the forgiveness of sins by the priest and transubstantiation that occurs at every Mass.

Jill Rice is a 2022-23 O’Hare Fellow at America. She is now the SEO and Analytics Associate at America. She graduated from Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus and majored in classical languages and comparative literature.