A Priest Must Be in a State of Grace to Administer the Sacraments

A Priest Must Be in a State of Grace to Administer the Sacraments governs a confrontation in which Father Rentería’s duties to his parishioners collide with his unresolved sin. The parish priest of Contla refuses to absolve him, arguing that a priest who remains in sin cannot continue to give communion to others. When Father Rentería pleads that people in his village are dying and asks to administer the sacraments provisionally, the priest does not make an exception: the dead must be left to God’s judgment. The scene presents sacramental service not as a practical function that can be separated from the minister’s conduct, but as a responsibility that demands personal accountability.

The principle and its grounds

The rule emerges from Father Rentería’s attempt to make a general confession at Contla. The parish priest’s refusal is not based on a vague judgment of character. He identifies a specific failure: Father Rentería allowed a man who would not even be named to trample on the Church. The accusation makes his conduct a breach of pastoral responsibility as well as a personal sin. The priest asks what can now be expected of him and challenges him to consider what he has done with the strength entrusted to him by God.

The confessor acknowledges that Father Rentería is regarded as good by people in his village and recognizes the hardship of serving poor, remote communities. That recognition does not settle the matter in his favor. In the priest’s account, goodness as a reputation is not enough when sin has been permitted to prevail. Nor can the village’s continuing faith be credited to Father Rentería’s ministry: the confessor says it rests instead on superstition and fear. His judgment therefore joins the rule’s personal and institutional dimensions. The minister’s own state matters, but so does the way he has exercised—or failed to exercise—his authority in relation to wrongdoing.

Confession before ministry

Father Rentería asks whether the refusal means that he must confess to someone other than the priest before him. The answer is yes: seeking another confessor is his duty. The priest frames this requirement as a condition of continuing to administer communion. Father Rentería immediately raises the prospect that his ministry might be suspended; the confessor says he does not think that will happen, although he considers suspension deserved and leaves the judgment to those with authority over it.

This exchange distinguishes the spiritual demand from its possible institutional enforcement. The confessor does not claim that suspension is certain, nor does he present it as his own decision. But uncertainty about punishment does not soften the obligation. Father Rentería cannot treat the possibility that others will overlook his conduct as permission to continue unchanged. The route offered is confession elsewhere, not an exemption from confession.

The appeal of urgent need

Father Rentería then asks for a temporary accommodation. He says that he must administer the holy oils and the Eucharist, and that many people are dying in his village. His appeal is concrete and pastoral: refusal may leave him unable, in the immediate circumstances he describes, to perform rites for the dying. The urgency makes his request more than an effort to evade a rule; it puts the rule under pressure from the needs of the people he serves.

The priest nevertheless refuses. His reply—that God should judge the dead—does not deny that deaths are occurring or that Father Rentería faces a difficult ministry. It rejects the idea that those circumstances authorize him to set aside the condition he has just stated. Father Rentería presses once more, asking whether the answer is no; the text confirms that the priest of Contla has said no. The repetition gives the refusal its weight: the need is heard, the plea is made explicitly provisional, and still the boundary holds.

The sourness of the scene

Afterward, the two priests walk through corridors shaded by azaleas and sit beneath a trellis where grapes are ripening. Before Father Rentería can ask about them, the priest says that they are sour. He reflects that everything grows well in their land through Providence, yet everything that grows there has an acidity. This closing image connects the rule’s severity to the passage’s sense of a harsh, compromised religious life: abundance and sourness coexist, just as the priest recognizes the labor of Father Rentería’s calling while refusing to excuse his failure.

The scene does not show Father Rentería receiving absolution or obtaining permission to administer the sacraments. Its immediate conclusion is refusal, followed by the sour-grape image rather than reconciliation. The rule thus remains unresolved in practice, but its demand is clear: pastoral need and local esteem cannot themselves restore a priest’s standing when he has failed to confront sin. The encounter makes the cost of that principle visible in the very circumstance Father Rentería invokes—people are dying—without allowing urgency to become absolution.