DO YOU KNOW THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THESE SINS WEREN'T FORGIVEN IN THE CHURCH? - ST. CALLISTUS I

   

  One of the most beautiful powers of the Church is the power to forgive sin, entrusted to her by her Divine Spouse, Our Lord Jesus, "If you forgive any sin, they are forgiven; if you retain any sin, they are retained" (John 20:23). This assurance that our sins are forgiven when we approach the sacrament of reconciliation, continues to urge us on to the hope prepared for us which the eyes, the ears or the imagination of man cannot experience. This grace of God's benevolence, also, supports St. Theresa's claims that, "God is just, He understands that we are but humans". However, there was a time in the Church when certain sins were considered unforgivable especially by the physical Church. These sins are MURDER, IDOLATRY, FRAUD, APOSTASY, BLASPHEMY, ADULTERY, FORNICATION. This, at a particular time in history caused great issues in the early Church. However, we owe the full access to God's mercy through the ministry of the Church, as we have it today, to the disposition and intervention of Pope Callistus I.

    St. Callistus was a slave who was put in charge of a bank. When the funds were lost, he fled out of fear but was intercepted and arrested. He was, later, released by the appeal of the Christians who believed he could better recover their money outside the prison. However, he was, later, rearrested for fighting in the synagogue when he was trying to borrow money or collect debts. Thus, he was sentenced to work in the mines of Sardinia. He was released together with other Christians, at the request of Hyacinthus, a eunuch prebyster of Marcia. His health was so much deteriorated at this stage that the Christians sent him to Antium to recover. 

    In 199, Pope Zephyrinus ordained him a deacon and put him in Charge of the Christian cemetery at the Appian way. This duty he performed with so much love, devotion and care that Emperor Julian, the Apostate wrote "Christians have gained most popularity because of their charity to strangers and because of their care for the burial of the dead". He was appointed Bishop of Rome by popular acclamation at the death of Pope Zephyrinus. In his tenure as the Bishop of Rome,  he brought back apostates and schismatics, and further decreed that those sins listed above can be forgiven by the Church. These caused great disapproval from certain members of the Church to the extent that his tenure earned the Church the first Anti-Pope, Hippolytus of Rome. He, also, had other rivals like Tertulian who believed that such sins shouldn't be forgiven  especially by the physical Church, once one has been baptised. However, the Pope insisted on the abundance of God's mercy. Pope Callistus died in 222 or 223 during an uprising in Rome. Legend has it that he was thrown into a well. He was buried at the cemetery of Calepodius on the Aurelian way. The Church celebrates his optional memorial on the 14th of October.

    In St. Callistus, we see a saint and Pope, who had a personal encounter with God, he suffered many difficulties, arrests, slavery and thus, learned from his experience to show love to others and to exercise the superabundance of God's mercy and the Church's privileges. He believed so much in the resurrection of the dead that he buried dead bodies with so much love. He didn't allow his bad experiences to make him bad but learnt from it to show love.

    Let us, then,  learn from this apostle of God's Mercy to show mercy to others and to learn from our bad experiences to the good.

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