Chapter I. The Sacrament of Penance the Special Sacrament of the Compassion of Jesus
My object in the following pages is to speak of the Sacrament of Penance, not so much as it is divinely proposed to us through the Church as an object of our Faith, but as it is, an object of our love. I may, therefore, pass over as already known its Divine institution, its form, its matter, and its effects, to use the language of our Theology, and speak of it as it manifests to us the special tenderness of the love of Jesus, and draws us to itself by the effusion of special gifts of grace. The Sacrament of Penance is loved by Catholics, and hated by the world. Like the Pillar, which of old guided the people of God, to us it is all light; to the world it is all darkness. There are two things of which the world would fain rid itself — of the day of Judgment and the Sacrament of Penance: of the former, because it is searching and inevitable; of the latter, because it is the anticipation and the witness of judgment to come. For this cause there is no evil that the world will not say of the Confessional. It would dethrone the Eternal Judge if it could, therefore it spurns at the judge who sits in the tribunal of Penance, because he is within the reach of its heel. And not only the world without the Church, but the world within its unity, the impure, the false, the proud, the lukewarm, the worldly Catholic, and in a word, all who are impenitent, both fear and shrink from the shadow of the Great White Throne which falls upon them from the Sacrament of Penance. But to all who are penitent, in whatsoever degree and of whatsoever character, it is an object of love next after the Holy Eucharist, and for reasons which even the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar does not equally present. The presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is real and substantial, proper and personal, in all the fulness of His Godhead and Manhood. His presence in the Sacrament of Penance is by representation and by grace. In this then there is no comparison possible. In the Holy Eucharist Jesus manifests Himself in His royalty, power, arid glory. In the Sacrament of Penance, in His tenderness as a Physician, and His compassion as the Good Shepherd. In the former He attracts and transforms us chiefly by His divine attributes; in the latter by His human experience, sympathy, and pity. In the Holy Eucharist Jesus draws us upwards to Himself; in the Sacrament of Penance He stoops down to listen to us, and to open to us His Sacred Heart, in the midst of our sins and in the hour of our greatest miseries. The Holy Eucharist is Jesus reigning amongst the just; the Sacrament of Penance is Jesus seeking among sinners for those that are lost; the former is the Sacrament of Saints, the latter, of the sinful; and therefore to such as we are it comes down with a singular nearness, an intimate contact with our needs, and an articulate and human voice of help and solace. What, then, I would wish to do is to set down some of the reasons why we ought to contemplate and to approach it with love. The reasons I will give shall be as follows: —
Because, first, it is the special Sacrament of the Compassion of Jesus; secondly, it is the means of self-knowledge; thirdly, of perfect contrition; fourthly, of reparation; and lastly, of perseverance.
- And first, I would show that it is the special Sacrament of the Compassion of Jesus. The Sacrament of Penance then both manifests and applies the fulness of the grace of Jesus to sinners. When our Divine Lord breathed upon the Apostles and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained,"1 He exempted no soul then living, nor any who should afterwards come into the world, from this divine commission of pardon. He placed in the hands of His Apostles the gift of His Most Precious Blood, wherewith to sprinkle the whole earth and the people of all ages and generations. It was a commission to Jew and Gentile, to those who then believed, and to all who through their word should afterwards believe in His name. It included also the greatest of sinners. No man was shut out from the great mission of penance and of pardon. The oldest and most inveterate sinner, whose sin was red as scarlet and black as the night, the most proudly impious, and the most habitual in relapse, all are within the terms and reach of absolution. He has Himself said, " Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men save only one, the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven,* because the blasphemy of the Spirit is essentially a sin that is not repented of. It consists in blaspheming and rejecting the Lord of repentance and the very commission of forgiveness. It becomes unpardonable, not by a decree of the Divine legislation, but by the moral bar put by the sinner himself. This alone excepted, there is no sin of the flesh or spirit, howsoever inveterate, guilty, or aggravated, for which there is not a full, a perfect, and instant absolution.
But the Sacrament of Penance not only conveys pardon to all and for all sins whatsoever, it also bestows upon the soul an exuberance of divine gifts. As Baptism is our first spiritual resurrection, so, if we afterwards fall into mortal sin, Penance is our second. And therefore they are called the Sacraments of the dead, because they raise souls dead in sin to the life of justice, and in raising the soul they fill it with grace and charity. The sanctifying grace lost after Baptism is restored in Penance, and not only so, but all the works of piety and charity, which through our mortal sins are mortified and die, by absolution are fully revived and live again before God.
Like as spring comes after winter and revives all things, and the lands and the woods, which a little while ago seemed dead, put on a new vigour and fruitfulness, so with the soul. It was dead, it is alive again, and all the fruits which hung withered on the bough are quickened once more with a new life. By Baptism we were sons of God, by sin we lost our adoption and fell from grace and charity; by Penance we are brought back again to Friendship and Sonship with our Father in Heaven. Such is the fulness of grace of which the Sacrament of Penance is a permanent and inexhaustible source.
- Another way in which the Sacrament of Penance manifests the compassion of Jesus Christ is its freeness. This full, perfect, and universal absolution from all sins of our whole life, in all their multitude and in all their guilt, would be cheaply purchased by years of sorrow, or by a life of penance, or by loss of life itself. Who is there that would not do, or suffer, or sacrifice anything, or even die, if by dying he could make sure of an eternal pardon? Nevertheless it is for none of these conditions that our Divine Lord bestows His forgiveness on us. We could not purchase it, therefore He purchased it for us. We were " sold gratis," that is, betrayed and lost by sin, and we are "redeemed without money/'2 that is, as we had not wherewith to pay He let us go and forgave us the debt,t and yet not till He had paid it Himself. According to the way of wisdom and love, ordained by the Father, the Son of God was incarnate, that He might take a human life, and that having taken it He might have somewhat to lay down for us. " No man taketh it away from me: I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again."t By the passion of His whole mortal life, and above all, by the last act of shedding for us His Most Precious Blood, Jesus purchased for us the absolution of Baptism and of Penance. It cost Him dear to institute those holy Sacraments. It cost3 us nothing, for He has freely given them to us. They are ours because they are His, and they are His because He purchased them by the last drop of His Divine Blood. By an act of sovereign. largesse He bestows them upon us. Every several absolution is a Eoyal pardon, freely and abundantly bestowed, not only " without money and without any price,"4 but notwithstanding our great un worthiness.
And even more than this. That we may be forgiven He requires of us at least a penitent heart; and yet this penitent heart is also His gift. It is by His own preventing grace that we are disposed for the Sacrament of Penance. It is He who awakens supernatural fear by the light of Faith in the reason. It is He who stings the conscience with " the spirit of burning" and the consciousness of past sin. It is He who awakens the hopes of our Heavenly Father's pardon, and gives to the will the impulse which moves it to the Confessional. "No man cometh to the Father but by me;"* u and no man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him." The Sacrament of Penance then is the Sacrament of the Sovereign Grace of Jesus, and the especial channel and witness of His compassion, and round about the tribunal where He sits in His royal clemency the attraction of His secret inspiration is always moving to and fro to win souls to come to Him. Such is the freeness with which He bestows on men the dear-bought pardon of His Most Precious Blood.
- Once more the compassion of Jesus shows itself in the Sacrament of Penance by the inexhaustible frequency with which He bestows upon us absolution after absolution. The angels sinned once and fell. They had no Redemption, no Redeemer; once fallen, fallen to all eternity. Adam sinned once, and fell from life and sonship. He had then no Sacrament of Penance, no Baptism of regeneration. But when sin entered Redemption came with it. And grace brought in a dispensation of forgive-
*St. John, xiv. 6.
ness: first came the virtue of penance as the condition of pardon. Now it is embodied in a Sacrament. " Not as it was by one sin, so also is the gift. For judgment indeed was by one unto condemnation, but grace is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned through one, much more they who receive abundance of grace out of the gift, and of justice, shall reign in life through one Jesus Christ."5 Adam's one sin brought death even on those who had not sinned. The Precious Blood of Jesus has brought absolution upon all men, and for all sins countless as the stars of Heaven. There is but one Baptism, but there are many absolutions, for the Sacrament of Penance is a fountain ever-flowing, perennial, and inexhaustible. The silver trumpets proclaimed the jubilee once only in every fifty years, but the Precious Blood cries to us in the Sacrament of Penance at all hours, by day and by night. The pool of Bethsaida in Jerusalem had no healing virtue save only after its waters had been stirred by the visit of an Angel, and then they healed but one sick man: the first alone who could go down into them. Its porches were filled with sufferers languishing with sickness and hope deferred. Again and again for years the gift had been snatched from them even at the moment of arriving; while they were even going down into the waters, another less maimed, and less in need than they were, went down into the waters before them and carried away the grace. To try their faith and patience God hardly opened His hand, and let His power fall only by single drops upon the surface of the pool. Wonderful illustration and contrast! The fountain opened in the heavenly Jerusalem for the sin of man is open day and night; always full of power and grace. Jesus Himself is there the Lord of all Power. Healing and virtue go out from Him with a divine and inexhaustible fulness. It is not the first, or one alone that is healed, but all comers and all sufferers from all lands and at all hours, and no man takes away another's absolution, nor does any one need another's hand to help him to go down into the pool of the Most Precious Blood. God the Holy Ghost is there drawing, sustaining, upholding the weak and maimed, as they go down and are healed one by one. And that not once only, but seventy times seven; as often as men fall, so often they may return, and the same Precious Blood cleanses and heals always as for the first time, with a divine and perfect absolution. Jesus makes no distinction. All who come with the necessary dispositions of heart are healed. For all sins whatsoever, sins after repentance, sins after absolution, sins after a long life of devotion, sins in the full sunshine of His love, there is but one condition — sorrow and the will to sin no more, and where this is, absolution is sure and full.
- And here again His compassion is almost more luminously shown, that is, in the facility of that which He requires of us as a condition to His absolute pardon. It is in His sovereign gift, and yet riot without condition. But this condition He has reduced to the least He could require. Saint Augustine says, " God created us without our co-operation, but He will not justify us without it." In our creation we were passive and unconscious, in our justification we must be conscious and active. If it were not so, we should not be moral agents, nor would our salvation be by moral means. Though, as I have said, He might have exacted the most that man can do as a condition of eternal life, He requires the least which His moral law exacts. In Baptism He pours out upon us all His gifts of regeneration, sonship, justification, sanctifying grace, and charity, while we are as yet unconscious. Compared with this, indeed, the Sacrament of Penance is more exacting, and it was therefore called by the Holy Fathers " Baptismus laboriosus," a toilsome Baptism, and " post naufragium tabula," a plank after shipwreck, to show that it was the last hope to the lost. Nevertheless, in itself it is a miracle of the facility of Jesus in forgiving sinners.
And first, all that He demands of us is to come to the Sacrament of Penance. He sits all day long in the Confessional, saying,6 " Come to me all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you." He upbraids us for our unwillingness, " You will not come to me that you may have life."t " All the day long have I spread my hands to a people that believeth not and contradicteth me."f He pleads with us as if we did Him wrong in destroying ourselves. " Oh, my people, what have I done to thee, or in what have I molested thee, answer thou me?"7 " Then come and accuse me," saith the Lord. " If your sins be as scarlet they shall be made white as snow, if they be red as crimson they shall be white as wool. "II Less than this He could not require. At least we must come to Him in the Sacrament of His compassion, that our sins may be forgiven. But I have already shown that even the disposition and the desire to come to Him spring from the inspiration of His own preventing grace, by which He is at all days and all hours drawing souls to Himself. He requires then that we should come to Him, and that we should bring with us at least a sorrow for our sins. It would be a great insincerity and an immoral act to come to Him without sorrow for having offended against Him. This, at least, we owe to Him. If we can do no more, we can at least be sorry. And yet in sorrow there are many degrees so marked, that I might almost say there are many kinds, reaching from the sorrow of fear to the sorrow of love, from the sorrow which springs from a fear of judgment to come to the sorrow which flows from the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He might justly require of us the sorrow of love, but He requires of us only the sorrow of holy fear, that is from any supernatural motive of faith, such as of the judgment to come, and of eternal death, with a desire of being reconciled to Him. And yet this sorrow is not the sorrow of emotion and tears, but the sorrow of the reason and the will, that is a displeasure against our sins and against ourselves, with a will to sin no more. Unless we have this we should be unfit for absolution, for a will to sin is sin. A will not to sin is the least amends we can make, and this is no more than the retracting of the disobedient will whereby we have offended, and a returning to our obedience as children of God. Together with this sorrow He requires also a truthful and humble confession, a sincere self-accusation in the tribunal of penance, detailing at least the sins we remember, their kind, their number. To this must be joined a resolution to sin no more. Such is the state of heart He requires of us. With this even the greatest of sinners, with all the leprosy of his sin upon him, may come to the Sacrament of Penance, and be cleansed every whit. The prodigal son, after all his wantonness and all his wanderings, with all his ingratitude, and with the multitude of his sins upon him, beggared and barefoot, may return to his Heavenly Father with no more than a " Father, I have sinned against c
Heaven,"" and he is at once forgiven. This is the true facility of the pardon of Jesus Christ, not the false and delusive heresy of justification by faith alone, which the innovators of these later ages have invented, but the full, free, and sovereign pardon, with which every penitent soul is received and justified in the Sacrament of the Compassion of Jesus Christ.
- There is still one more token of His compassion in this Sacrament of Pardon, and it is the fervent desire with which He desires to absolve us of our sins. He loves every several soul with all the love of His Sacred Heart, and His whole Heart is bent at every moment on the salvation of those that are lost. He has told us that even the ninety and nine just are less present to His loving anxiety, to speak as He has taught us in the parable of the lost sheep, than the one sinner doing penance. He seeks out such a soul by His preventing grace. He surrounds, encompasses, envelopes it with lights, inspirations, impulses, attractions of8
His love and power. Even when we are unwilling to come to Him, He is yearning to draw us to Himself. We are distant, and He presses after us; we are unwilling, and He is urgent by His grace. We are cold, and He is on fire with the love of souls. We are tardy in listening, and tardier in coming to Him, and He is ardent and importunate in the reiteration of His calls and inspirations. For He desires to forgive us more than we desire to be forgiven. He loves us even more than we love ourselves. He thirsts for our salvation more than we desire to be saved; and it is in and through and by the Sacrament of Penance that He unfolds to us the full tenderness and compassion of His Sacred Heart in the midst of our miseries and our sins.
Such, then, are some of the reasons why this Sacrament ought to be an object of our love. It is because Jesus is with us as He was with Magdalen when she stood behind Him weeping, and with Peter after he had denied Him thrice. In it He again receives us to His grace and love, and through it
He guides, sustains, and consoles the penitent, the fearful, and the tempted. It is the Sacrament of the Presence and the love of the Good Shepherd, and by it all that is expressed in that title of tenderness and compassion is fulfilled to us. " I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly,"9 that is, with all fulness and freeness and facility, again and again as often as they need, and with all the fervour and generosity of the Sacred Heart.
And now this Sacrament of His love to many is necessary, and to all is a fountain of grace.
To those who after Baptism have fallen into mortal sin, it is of necessity. No other Sacrament of life remains to them. No other means of rising from the death of sin to the life of justice is ordained. They cannot raise themselves to life again. The charity of God has departed from them, and the Holy Ghost has withdrawn His habitual grace. The interior acts of their souls are dead. Their good actions have no power of merit. One act of mortal sin has destroyed all. One such sin in youth has cankered the root of a long life, or one such sin at the close of many years has withered all the growth and fruit of the longest obedience. If they so die, they are lost, and lost for ever. To die out of the love of God is eternal death. How shall they be revived again, except only by this second Sacrament of the dead? If they come with the sorrow of faith and hope, even though they have not charity, the compassion of Jesus will give them a full forgiveness, and breathe into them the breath of life once more.
And lastly to all, even to the holiest, the Sacrament of Penance is a fountain of grace. For it is hard to know ourselves, and it perfects us in self-knowledge; it is hard to be generous in our sorrow, and it perfects our contrition; it is hard to be fervent, arid it gives us the spirit of mortification and courage. It is hard to be steadfast and persevering, and it sustains and keeps us up as by the power of the everlasting arms. But of this I shall have to speak hereafter.
They who habitually frequent this holy Sacrament live in a sweet bondage of love, which is perfect freedom, with a will elevated and confirmed in the liberty of the children of God. They who spurn and neglect it, seek for liberty, and fall into a bondage which is heavy and bitter. The sins of the heart and the sins of the tongue, the temptations of the devil, the yoke of the world, scruples and stings of conscience, fear of death and terrors of judgment to come, these are the wages of those who refuse the light burden and the sweet yoke of Jesus in this Sacrament of His Compassion.
Footnotes
Chapter 2 of 6