Chapter II. The Sacrament of Penance a Means of Self-Knowledge
I HAVE hitherto shown that the Sacrament of Penance is the special manifestation of the compassion of Jesus. As the Church is the manifestation of His Truth to every age, so Penance is the manifestation of His tenderness. St. Cyprian calls the Church " Sacramentum unitatis...et Veritatis,"1 "The Sacrament of Unity and Truth;" because by the supernatural Unity of the Church the Truth is incorporated, perpetuated, and promulgated to the world. So St. Optatus says, " Claves non habent hseretici quas solus Petrus accepit,"f "The heretics have not the keys, which Peter alone received;" and St. Augustine,
"Unitas tenet, unitas dimittit,"2 " Unity binds, unity looses," that is, in the unity of the Church alone the power of loosing from sin is found. Because the Sacrament of Penance is the only revealed channel of the pardon of Jesus Christ to those who fall from baptismal grace. Our Lord, in warning the Church of Laodicea, said, " Because thou sayest I am rich and made wealthy, and have need of nothing; and knowest not, that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."! They were lukewarm and therefore they were self-deceived, and because they were self-deceived they were self-trusting. They believed themselves to be possessed of light, and faith, and grace, and knowledge of themselves, and they knew not their poverty and blindness. Our Lord invites and warns them to come to Him for gold and white raiment, and eye-salve, that is, for sanctifying grace and justification and knowledge of themselves. And this He bestows upon those who are fallen from their baptismal innocence in the Sacrament of Penance.
My present purpose, then, is to show how the Sacrament of Penance is the means of self-knowledge.
- And first, because it requires and sustains the habit of self-examination. Once a year, at least, every soul must examine its state before God under pain of sin. Frequent confession requires frequent self-examination. Daily self-examination is the daily preparation for confession, which is the fruit and result of daily self-examination. In this way we are bound by a strong and constraining obligation to a duty which is necessary to salvation, but both unpleasant and difficult. It is absolutely necessary, by the necessity of a means without which there can be no salvation, for without repentance salvation is impossible, and without self-knowledge repentance is impossible. There can be no sorrow or detestation of sins which we know not, nor of acts which we do not know to be sins. And yet, this is an ignorance which will not excuse us. It is vincible, and therefore culpable. Again, if we forget our sins God does not forget them. The sins of childhood and youth and of long years past we may remember no more, but they are written in the book of God's remembrance. All our whole life, so tangled and confused, illegible and dark to our eyes, is all clear and distinct to His. It is a dangerous thing to forget our past. We cannot cast it off except by Penance. Though we forget it we can never escape from its presence. It follows as a shadow, noiseless but inseparable. " Some men's sins are manifest, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after."3 There is but one way to be loosed from them, and that by the power of the keys. To this, confession is necessary, and confession without self-knowledge is impossible.
But self-examination is not only of vital necessity, it is also a painful and displeasing task. There are two things which we shrink from seeing as they are, God and ourselves. The Sanctity of God overwhelms and terrifies us. The sight of our own sins and miseries galls and humbles us. We have not the courage or the will to look steadily on either of these things. If we catch a momentary sight of them we turn away, and try to lose ourselves in the distractions of other thoughts. As St. James says, " If a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer: he shall be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass. For he beheld hiuiself and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was."4
It wounds our self-love to see our faults, the sins of commission, the breaches of the ten commandments, the sins of omission, the neglects, the ingratitude, the meanness of which we have been guilty. It requires a great sincerity and no little humility to look thoroughly and patiently into ourselves, and to learn the worst of our hearts. It disturbs our peace and breaks our self-complacency. For this reason, multitudes make their self-examination hastily, timidly, and superficially.
But not only is self-examination displeasing; it is also very difficult. For next after God nothing is more inscrutable than the heart which is made in His own likeness. It is a mystery to itself. It conceals itself from our sight, and its motions become unconscious like the circulation of the blood. It is within us, and it is therefore invisible. It is insensible because it is habitual. It is a perpetual motion so rapid that it seems like rest. The thoughts of the intelligence are as countless as the stars of the firmament, the emotions of the heart are as multitudinous as the waves of the sea. The volitions of the will are as inconstant and as continual as the changes and shifts of the wind. " The heart is perverse above all things."5 It is a deceiver, a flatterer, a dreamer, and a companion of the Tempter. The heart is a deceiver because it is ever changing. It puts on a new colour with its outward circumstances, with its inward trials, with the society in which it may be. It interweaves its motives and misnames its actions. The fiery persuade themselves that they are zealous, the censorious that they are zealous for truth and justice, the slothful and lax that they are benign. It foreshortens its ends, so that the ambitious believe themselves to be disinterested, and the worldly to be single-eyed, till they know not for what end they are acting, and while they believe themselves to have only one aim in sight, they have another below the horizon. But more than this, the heart is a flatterer. It exaggerates all that it has of good: such as its prayers, crosses, alms, devotions, graces, much more its intentions. It excuses all evil. It throws the blame of its faults upon temptations, upon persons, upon circumstances, upon everything but upon itself. It gilds even its sins by soft names and high professions of good intentions and services rendered to God. The heart is also a dreamer, for it paints itself by the imagination, and pictures itself to itself as a penitent in sackcloth, or a saint in ecstasies. It reads the lives of saints, and dreams itself in their place. It melts also into tears and is moved to passionate emotions before a crucifix or the Blessed Sacrament, like as others shed tears over a tale of imaginary wrongs or of majestic beauty. It puts impulses for volitions, desires for intentions, and intentions for deeds. And, last of all, it is the familiar and playfellow of the Tempter. It listens to him and parleys with him as Achan in Jericho. It courts him as Balaam, and it houses him as Judas did. Of such is the heart capable, and every heart has the whole capacity of all this self-deceit. We have need of a firm eye and an unsparing hand to search it out; and unless we be sustained and even bound to this painful task, few have severity enough with themselves to do it as they ought. It is the Sacrament of Penance, then, which binds us to this duty, and the oftener we come to it the oftener we are compelled to search out the secret working of our hearts and to know them with a true knowledge.
- Again, it places us in the light of the Cross. The reason why we all see our sinfulness so little is because we so little appreciate the Sanctity of God. Our lives seen in the light of the world, or of our own self-love, or of our flattering friends, are very different from the same life seen in the light of the presence of God. Thomas a Kempis says, " Sordet in conspectu judicis, quod fulget in conspectu opeantis," " What looks bright in the eyes of the doer looks base in the sight of the Judge." When Isaias saw the Lord upon His throne his first consciousness was that he was a man of unclean lips.6 Daniel fell at the feet of the angel of the Lord, and his beauty was turned into corruption. St. John, when in vision he saw the Lord, on whose bosom he had lain, fell at His feet as dead. It was the light of the Divine Presence which revealed the sin and the infirmity of even such Saints as these. Such in its measure is the effect of the Sacrament of Penance upon us. We kneel under the light of the Ever-Blessed
Trinity, and of the Incarnate Word, and of His holy Passion, and of the Divine Soul of Jesus, which in its agony expiated our imperfect contrition, and of the Sacred Heart which gives out its illumination by the wound in the side of Jesus. All these lights come down upon us as we kneel in the Confessional, and in them we see not only ourselves, our past life, our present character, but the law of God which we have broken, its letter and its spirit, what it forbids, what it enjoins upon our obedience, our fidelity, and our generosity. And by this clearer knowledge of the rule we can detect our deviations from its rectitude. We never see ourselves more clearly than when we kneel under the crucifix in the Sacrament of Penance; and the oftener we kneel there, the clearer grows the light of the knowledge of self in the presence of God and at the feet of Jesus Christ.
- And further, one great hindrance to self-knowledge is the spirit of self-defence. The Pharisee, who stood and prayed by
*v himself, thanking God that he was not as other men are, is the type of those who turn from the Confessional. The Publican is the type of the Penitent upon his knees. For what is the Sacrament of Penance but the Sacrament of self-accusation? We are all tempted to excuse ourselves. When the eyes and ears of the world are open upon us, we are all full of apologies or denials. It needs the heroic humility of a Saint to suffer and be silent; like St. Vincent de Paul, who, when falsely accused in the antechamber of the King of France, went down on his knees and took the shame without a word. But in the Confessional we can make no excuses. We know that all is known to Him who sits there unseen: " For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also, and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature invisible in His sight: but all
D things are naked and open to His eyes, to whom our speech is."7 We know that we can suppress nothing; that He saw all, and heard all, and knows all before we speak, and that He puts our truth on trial, in requiring us to tell out our whole tale against ourselves. We cannot give a turn even to an expression, or pass over a single point, for He knows all things. Not a jot or a tittle may be changed, for the Divine scrutiny searches the heart at the time of the confession as well as at the time of the sin.
- And besides this, the Sacrament of Penance gives us the guidance of another. We know well that no man can trust himself to be judge in his own case. With all our profession of sincerity we are warped when we are judging of ourselves. We are unconscious of our words and acts. We note instantly in another the very things of which we are not aware in ourselves. Nay, we detect the least impetuosity in others, and fail to see the most headstrong passion in ourselves. As our Divine Lord has said, " we can see the mote in our brother's eye, and cannot perceive the beam which is in our own;"8 and therefore He has ordained the Sacrament of Penance, in which, go when we may, we find at least one man in the world who is a true friend to us — at least one friend who will not flatter us.
And more, the Priest in the Confessional is not only an impartial judge, but also a practised one. Like as a physician, who by long use knows all the symptoms of disease, who can tell its premonitory signs, the manifestations of its presence, and the effects which it leaves behind it: so is the Priest, who is divinely ordained to sit and judge " between leprosy and leprosy," and to discern whether it be only rising, or in full power, or departing. A physician will often discover disease where no one suspects it, and by signs which to others are unperceived. Not only the beat of the pulse and the colour of the skin, but its texture, the light of the eye, the harshness of the hair, and other such tokens, give evidence of the presence of disease. In like manner, in the Confessional, long habit of dealing with the pathology of souls enables a Confessor at once to discover symptoms which the Penitent does not know or even imagine.
But further, he is not only practised, and his perceptions quickened by experience and use, but he is also enlightened to discover even that which the Penitent may not say or know. There is a special light vouchsafed to those who guide souls. They are moved often to say more than they are aware of, and to waken up whole periods of memory and trains of thought, which the Penitent has either forgotten, or failed to perceive. Sometimes a question suggests a new and truer estimate of actions which have been altogether misunderstood. Sometimes it seems like an intuition, or a gift of supernatural insight, as indeed it is. Sometimes perhaps consciously, often unconsciously, like men that work in mines, before they are aware, they strike through into open day, and find themselves all of a sudden in the light of the sun. The Holy Spirit makes use of the Confessor to illuminate the Penitent, either by enlightening him directly, or by using him to reflect a light which he hardly sees himself.
In these ways, then, they who frequent the Sacrament of Penance are ever advancing in a truer knowledge of themselves.
- And lastly, there is another light vouchsafed to them directly, an illumination which falls inwardly upon the conscience from the increase of spiritual grace. For, as every Sacrament conveys an increase of grace, and every grace brings light, so every time we worthily receive the Sacrament of Penance we receive a greater inward light. Self-examination prepares for the Sacrament, and the Sacrament elevates it to a supernatural knowledge of self. At the beginning we see ourselves but dimly, and can discern little with truth. We " see men, as it were trees, walking;''9 but in a little while all becomes self-evident as the light of day. It was by this internal light that Saints have called themselves the " chief of sinners;" that St. Clare wondered that her sisters did not shun her as u one stricken with the plague." St. Vincent Ferrer used to say, that he daily grew worse and worse. It was this that made St. Francis Borgia construct what he called the ladder of confusion. That is, he first placed himself before the Holy Trinity, and was overwhelmed by the contrast of the uncreated Sanctity and our created infirmity. Next he placed himself in the light of the Sacred Humanity, and confounded himself at the sight of his own nature, so shattered and defaced; then in the presence of the Immaculate Mother of God, a mere creature, though God's mother, and humbled himself for the soils and stains of both original and actual sin; then before the Holy Angels, and condemned his own tardy and lingering obedience by the energy and fervour of their ministries; then of the Saints, and by their perseverance he measured his own inconstancy; then of the servants of God on earth, of whom he professed himself to be the least; then of the souls in Purgatory, of whom the least humble is more profoundly humble than any Saint on earth; then of the souls that are lost, confessing that if they had received his grace they would have been holier and more penitent than himself. Such was his practice for some two hours a day, during which he examined himself by the ten commandments, and after each made acts of contrition for his many and grievous transgressions. Such was the self-examination of a Saint. He had no difficulty in finding matter of humiliation, though he had so little; we find it a hard task, though we have sinned so much. And why? It is because our internal perceptions of God and of His Kingdom are faint and dim. The knowledge of God and of ourselves comes and goes, and varies together. St. Francis, who on Mount Alvernia received from the flaming Seraph on the Cross the five piercing rays which imprinted on him the stigmata of Jesus, spent the whole of a lonely night under the alternate illumination of this knowledge of God and of himself, pouring out his soul in repeating: " 0 my God! how great art Thou; how little am I!" From whence, then, did all these great Saints receive this profound light of self-knowledge, but from the life of Penance, of which this Sacrament is the source and perfection.
From all that has been said two plain practical truths are evident. First, that we may never think that we know all we might of ourselves. In the heart there are so many windings and doubles, so many masks and disguises, so many false lights, so much paint upon the face, and so many artificial expressions of countenance, that it is certain we deceive ourselves as well as others. They who know themselves best are only least deceived. This we may understand by thinking how different our past life looks now. At the time we thought it all fair, just as we think our present life. We suspected nothing wrong in things which now seem manifestly wrong. We were as confident of our motives and intentions then as we are now. But a few years have thrown a new light upon it all. A few years hence and we shall see our present as now we see our past. How different all will look upon a deathbed! Then a new and true light will reveal a multitude of secrets, and show much that we never believed possible. How different all will appear when we look back upon our earthly life from the world beyond the grave, in the hour of the particular judgment, and at the moment of entering Purgatory, and at the general judgment of the last day! Then all masks shall be taken off from all faces, and we shall know as we are known and see as we are seen. Then many who have seemed to know each other, parents, children, friends, pastors, penitents, shall know each other for the first time, and wonder at the vain show in which they lived and died. We must, therefore, be always pressing onwards in the knowledge of self, with much self-mistrust and with a sincere desire to know the worst of ourselves.
And next, we may learn never to fear when we see the worst of ourselves. To see more sins is no sign of committing more, but of greater knowledge of self. And if we have more knowledge then more light, and if more light then more of the presence of the Holy Ghost. For when He comes into the heart He casts a broad light upon it, but conceals Himself. We see ourselves, not Him, and He reveals to us, not the things which are pleasant to us, but those that are displeasing to Himself; not our graces, or prayers, or good dispositions, but our sins and omissions, our inward faults, our unstable wills, our unloving hearts. He reveals to us that we are poor and miserable, outcast, blind, and naked, that we may buy of Him gold tried in the fire, and white raiment, and eyesalve to open our eyes, that we may see ourselves as we appear now in His sight and in the light of His eternal throne.
Footnotes
Chapter 3 of 6