Reconciliation

One must also say so, promise to change, and then receive the forgiveness of the other.

It is interesting to note that most psychologists agree on how dangerous it is to mental health to bottle up guilt, and how unloving a relationship becomes when it lacks openness.  Similarly, one who has acted contrary to the bond of love with Christ longs to tell him so, and to reaffirm his love and to be forgiven.  The contrition should be as loud and concrete as the unloving deed was....  If in human love forgiveness is followed by the embrace of reconciliation, how is this to be duplicated in relationship to Christ, who is not physically present to us?

It must be by virtue of some spiritual presence which is yet concrete enough to serve man's need for the full vivid moment.  We cannot show that the Sacrament of Penance is the only way that Christ could have accomplished this result; but perhaps analysis may help us to understand it as an invention of love by considering the words Christ said to his disciples, Whose sins you forgive they are forgiven. 

The priest serves not as a particular man — certainly not as a mere busybody, or even as a psychologist of the spirit — but as the visible representative of Christ's forgiving love.  This sacrament concretely applies the redemption Christ enacted for those sins which negate, and even sometimes destroy, the bond of love between the soul and God.