THE BENEFITS OF PENANCE.
Penance and all the words which express the various ways of
practicing it, humiliation, self-denial, mortification, are among
the hard sayings of the Gospel which few can endure. Its evils, as
most people view it, are better known than its benefits. It is not
commonly regarded as essential to religion. Not even all who deem
an interior spirit of penance necessary for salvation approve of.
its external observances of watching, fasting, abstinence, which,
howsoever suited to other times, are not considered to be in
keeping with the ideas and ways of our modern life. They are
associated with the fanaticism of the Pharisees, the disorders of
the Montanists, the excesses of the Flagellants, the delusions of
every form of a false mysticism. Even a St. Jerome, we are told,
would, if living in our day, mitigate the rigor of his penances
and choose some other means of acquiring sanctity. The leniency of
the ecclesiastical authorities in dispensing from prescribed
abstinences and fasts is misconstrued into an admission on the
part of the Church that penance, in its external practice at
least, is not now and perhaps never was, so very necessary for a
Christian life. At most it is a virtue of necessity, never to be
practiced voluntarily, but only under compulsion.
Now, it commonly happens that those who reject the hard sayings of
the Gospel delude themselves with foolish theories instead. So
they let their imaginations run on the hardships and abuses of a
practice which, when properly regulated, is altogether salutary
and reasonable. In vain they strive to frame a religion for our
present state, which excludes penance, exterior as well as
interior, from its essential requisites. A virtue it surely is, to
some extent a virtue of necessity, it is true, but one which has
strong incentives and rewards for its voluntary exercise. It is
really a part of the virtue of justice, disposing us to make good
or repair the injury we have done to God by sin, by bewailing its
malice, suffering its penalties and taking every effective measure
to avoid it in future. Surely religion, which is man's union with
God, must include among its requisites the virtue which restores
that union when severed, and at the same time, to effect this
union is not the least of the benefits of penance. Instead,
therefore, of regarding penance as a virtue of necessity, it were
wiser and more grateful on our part to deem it a boon of God's
mercy and not to be content with suffering the penalties we cannot
avoid, but to impose on ourselves others of our own choice, or at
least to accept voluntarily what proper authority may prescribe
for us.
We cannot avoid our share in the evils of the sin of Adam and Eve.
As a result of that sin want and sorrow and tears, sickness,
infirmity and death are our lot and our inheritance. Whether men
read Scripture as a divine revelation or as an outworn fable, the
stern fact is there, that cursed is the earth in our work, that
with labor and toil we eat thereof all the days of our life, that
thorns and thistles are brought forth to us, and that we eat the
herbs of the earth. Strive as we may to evade the curse, cunningly
and successfully as we may seem to master the forces of nature so
as to make every creature contribute to <our comfort, we are still
outside the paradise of pleasure and before it is "Cherubim and a
flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life." Compelled
indeed we are by our very lot to do penance, to pay the penalty of
the crime which forfeited Eden for our race. Every day [brings its
trials, annoyances, afflictions, and even when all for a moment
seems well, if we are not consumed with remorse for the past we
are forever haunted by anxiety for the future, always menaced by
one or other form of human misery, by poverty, dishonor, disease,
with no brighter outlook than death. It is an act of the virtue of
penance to accept this judgment of God and to suffer whatever His
providence has in store for us. Without this virtue, therefore, we
can have no true religion, for we cannot observe His law in the
circumstances appointed for each one of us: with it the trials
that would otherwise afflict us are turned to our consolation and
profit.
If it is our lot to suffer all these things in consequence of a
sin for which we are not personally responsible, we might, with
reason, assume that there are penalties attached to our own
misdeeds; nay, that some of the sufferings we regard as the
consequences of original sin are directly or indirectly the result
of our personal sins. "Thy sin will find thee out;" "the wages of
sin is death," and such like maxims are the expressions of our own
experiences as well as revealed truths. The judgment on the
prophet David, even when he had acknowledged his crime and the
Lord had caused it to pass away, is an instance in point. "Only
because thou hast so made the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme
through this matter, even the son that is born to thee shall
surely die." Herein is an additional reason for suffering
patiently the afflictions sent us by Providence, and a motive for
rejoicing that we can, by the virtue of penance, not only obtain
pardon for sin but also do our share to satisfy God's offended
justice. With right minced people this motive is quite sufficient
to adopt voluntary penances, such as fasting, abstinence,
watching, silence and retirement, and other means of denying
nature. Even without the fear that God might chastise, or the
consolation found in making due reparation, it is natural that the
truly contrite spirit should resort to external penance as an
expression of its sorrow. The spirit depressed by sorrow imparts
its depression to the body; nay, the body naturally seeks to
express in its own way the sentiments which possess the soul: it
has tears and gloom and silence and utter prostration for its
language of grief; in food it can find no savor, in sleep no rest,
while its partner, the soul, is in grief. "For I did eat ashes
like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping." . . . "With tears
have I watered my couch," said the Prophet David; "in dust and
ashes I do penance," cried Job. The spirit truly contrite rises in
indignation against the corruptible body which is a load upon the
soul." I chastise my body and bring it into subjection," St. Paul
tells us, and he surely knew the wants of humanity in every age.
To bring the body into subjection, to keep the lower nature
subordinate to the higher, to control appetite and passion by
reason and will, are among the benefits of penance, which prove
that some practice of this virtue is absolutely necessary for
avoiding as well as for expiating sin. Self-indulgence is surely
no guarantee against yielding to temptation: self-denial is. To
seek one's comfort. in everything, to shrink from every annoyance
and pain, to avoid labor and fatigue, makes me too sensitive,
delicate and enervated to make the effort, resistance and
sacrifice implied in every victory over temptation. To persevere
in the practice of moderation in all things, one must exercise
self-denial. To be really temperate in the use of food and drink,
one must be in some degree abstemious. Some kinds of evil, we have
our Saviour's word for it, are driven out only by prayer and
fasting.
Greatest of all the benefits of penance is that it helps us to
know how grievous a thing is sin. In civil life it is of little
use to reason with one who is really criminal and the penalties of
the law are applied as the most effective means of making him
realize his guilt. It is the same with the transgressor of God's
law. Nothing is so sure to pierce his heart with fear, to force
him to consider the evil of his transgressions as the awful
retribution visited upon sin, the eternal punishment after death,
and before death the inevitable remorse and confusion, even should
there be no other temporal chastisement. Penance, the sorrow for
sin, the submission to the trials that come upon us in life, the
acceptance of the fasts and abstinences imposed on us by the
Church, and the voluntary adoption of other penitential practices,
all with a view to obtaining remission of sin and its
consequences, gives us what might be called the sense of sin. It
accomplishes for us what the Son of Man is to do when He comes in
judgment, "to convince the world of sin." It convinces us of our
sin, that is to say, of the malice and guilt, the enormity of our
transgression of God's law, and of our responsibility in His
sight. It makes an end of the excuses we invent without end to
extenuate our guilt. It opens our eyes to God's holiness, and
gives us a foretaste of His mercy. It fills us with gratitude and
with confidence, and all these sentiments in turn but deepen our
sense of sin. It is this benefit of penance the world needs most
to-day, for it is bent on ignoring the malice of sin, and of
denying the responsibility of the sinner. One sincere "I have
sinned" of the prodigal, and one act of self-denial in conformity
with this penitential utterance, would forever silence every
fallacy about the slavery of our wills, the fatal necessity of
evil, and enable us to perceive the enormity of sin and the power
of grace to aid our liberty to avoid it.
So natural is the inclination of the human heart to the exercise
of this virtue by corporal as well as by spiritual acts, so
important is the part it plays in man's destiny, so necessary is
it to moderate the excess both of the sorrow and of the external
penance, that, like marriage, Christ has made it the occasion of a
sacrament which is full of consolation. In the Sacrament of
Penance the soul can indulge its sorrow and give the most sincere
proof of it by a sincere confession of sin, crown all with a firm
purpose of amendment, accept in all humility the penance imposed
on it, and take away the assurance of forgiveness of past sins and
hope of grace to resist future temptations.
Precisely because penance restores, to some extent, the integrity
of our nature, the honor of man's nature, as the Collect for
Thursday in Passion week has it, and our union with God when
severed by sin, it avails with God, like prayer, to obtain His
favors. "Prayer is good with fasting and alms, more than to lay up
treasures of gold," said the Angel Raphael to Tobias. In Scripture
almost invariably the two go together, and when Lent comes, the
liturgy of the Church combines the two with supplications of
redoubled fervor and confidence; to use the language of the
<Preface> said at Mass during Lent, "it ennobles our minds, and
gives us strength and rewards." To continue in the language used
at other times in Lent, penance is ordained" to gladden us with a
holy earnestness, so that as earthly attractions grow dim, things
heavenly may grow clearer." It is not surprising, therefore, to
read in the prayer at Mass on Ash-Wednesday the petition that we
may enter with due dispositions this worshipful and solemn Fast.
It is truly a worshipful and solemn institution in the Church, the
fast of Lent and the fasts and abstinences at other seasons also,
prescribed as they are with the motive of making us imitate Christ
in His fast in the desert for forty days, of inciting us to the
practice of voluntary penance after the heroic models of the
Saints who, like St. Aloysius little needed their severe penances
for their own sins, of making us eager to obtain the mastery of
ourselves, the contempt for material conveniences and pleasures,
the high estimate of spiritual joy and of heavenly prospects,
which alone can support us in the trials that come upon us in this
life. Hence, no matter how the Church may accommodate its laws to
our weakness and necessities, no matter how unable we may be to
comply with her laws of fasting and of abstinence, we should never
lose the spirit of penance, but pray for the strength and courage
to practice it, in order to experience its benefits.
Taken from "The Messenger", Volume I, Fifth Series, 1902,
published by the Apostleship of Prayer.
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