The lifestyle today has changed and many young people are affected by it. The young people seem to be marked as alienated being in our Churches and many of them are living in a fragmented lifestyle caused by relativism, secularism and globalization and as a result the Sacrament of Reconciliation with God, with others, with self and with nature is also affected. The Sacrament of Reconciliation has suffered more than any other Sacrament in the Catholic Church because of many factors. And this is affirmed by Pope John Paul II noted in his Post-Synodal exhortation on Reconciliation and Penance when he said that, “the Sacrament of Reconciliation is in crisis.” The reasons of these crises as pointed above also include the way the Sacrament of Reconciliation was taught, celebrated, lived and understood as well as other challenging factors. History has shown us so much about the steps the Church has taken at different epochs regarding reconciliation. This Thesis is about “Encountering God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation: A Liturgical Catechesis for the Young People in Ikot Ekpene Diocese – Nigeria.” The rationale behind undertaking this study is the very fact that young people long to encounter and experience God yet they decline in the Sacrament of Confession which is a Sacrament of love. It is a pastoral care and response to the young people in our parishes to help them appreciate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Church through the proper celebration of the Penance can reach out to the young people yearning and longing to encounter and experience the compassionate and merciful God. Therefore, the Church (Ikot Ekpene Diocese) should open re-contextualization of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Looking at traditional understanding of reconciliation and its effects in Ikot Ekpene context and the history of the Sacrament of Reconciliation the Church should be able to contextualize the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There are many challenges and obstacles to the Sacrament of Reconciliation especially among the young people therefore, the aim of this thesis is an attempt at finding a way to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation better understood, more meaningful and relevant to young people in Ikot Ekpene Diocese as well as the whole Catholic world through a liturgical catechesis of the words used in celebrating the Sacrament, the role of the minister and the penitent, the Sacramental environment, signs and symbols and other elements relevant to the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a Sacrament of conversion. Therefore adaptation and inculturation (re-contextualization) of the Sacrament of Reconciliation through liturgical catechesis should be able to bridge the lex credendi, the lex orandi, and lex vivendi. No re-contextualization (inculturation) is possible without an adequate understanding of what we celebrate. Therefore, today’s pressing need is a pastoral praxis that corresponds to the theology of the Sacrament – a rite that links lex credendi, lex orandi, and lex vivendi.

Church teaching has often invoked 1 Corinthians 11:27 to justify the barring of dissidents from the sacrament of the Eucharist on the grounds of unworthiness. It has been particularly invoked to bar those in a state of sin without prior penance and those in a state of manifest grave sin with obstinacy. Both solutions emphasise the personal internal problems of the individual’s conscience rather than the social dimension of communion – a reality inconceivable to Pauline theology. Both solutions can only be justified if personal sin ostracises the individual from the Church since ‘being Church/ecclesial communion’ is a prerequisite to Eucharistic communion. Sadly, Church history has often prioritised Eucharistic communion over ecclesial communion, and, at times, alienated it completely from it. The Eucharist is to be understood in terms of ecclesial communion and not in terms of the nature of the Eucharist as such. Thus, the admission to the sacrament is a question of ecclesiology not Eucharistic theology. Pope Francis (without denying the stance of his predecessors) retrieves this social dimension of the text (Amoris Laetitia, n. 185-186). Through an in-depth exegesis of 1 Corinthians from the point-of-view of Scripture and Tradition, the study aims to address the issues raised by the biblical passage and to provide a pastoral contribution to the discussion regarding the divorced and remarried.

This paper will examine the nature of the Eucharist as a “sacrament of peace”, a sacrament by which the Christian believer is reconciled to Christ and the Church. While, properly-speaking, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the ordinary means of this activity, one sees that the Eucharist provides a healing balm for sin, enflames the soul with the fire of charity, and reveals itself as both a symbol of peace already realized and a sign of peace yet to come. This “sacrament of peace” bestows God’s peace to the Church, which, in turn, commissions the Christian to embody this peace through works of mercy and initiatives of justice. Through this, we see the social and missional implications for a community centered around the Eucharistic table. Helpful to this investigation will be the Eucharistic theology of the late Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

I will proceed in three parts: First, I will consider briefly the classic dispute between Luther and Cajetan on the power of the keys, with the goal of clarifying the ecclesiological nature of the sacrament of penance. Second, I will discuss a widespread modern Catholic consideration of the sacrament that misunderstands the nature of the juridical power of absolution by making it something virtually accessory to our reconciliation with God. Third, I will consider Aquinas’s teaching on the ecclesial dimension of the sacrament of reconciliation as a way of thinking about the relation between the priesthood and the Church. My basic argument is the following: The intrinsic form that all grace takes in the Christian economy of salvation is not only Christological but inherently sacramental and ecclesial. In the sacrament of penance, this grace provides entry into the communion of the Church and therefore renders Christ’s salvific action in the world effective in an irreplaceable way. Such juridical agency endures eschatologically, because reception of the sacrament of forgiveness from a rightly delegated minister entails an inchoate participation in the final judgment of Christ in his glory, and Christ’s judgment of mercy has everlasting ecclesial effects upon which we will be eternally dependent.

History shows that a commitment to solus Christus is based upon Scripture and the earliest Christian documents. Commitment to this doctrine was lost, though, after extra-biblical and traditional elements entered the church and became authoritative. The Reformers, on the other hand, understood that these traditions were simply the traditions of men. A commitment to the authority of Scripture for faith and practice resulted in a commitment to salvation mediated by Christ alone. The result is that God receives all of the glory for salvation since it is sought solely through His Son.