Chapter IV. The Sacrament of Penance the Sacrament of Reparation
We have seen the shame and sorrow of St. Mary Magdalen, in the house of Simon, the Pharisee, in the beginning of her conversion, and then the courage and fidelity of her devotion at the foot of the cross; and now when all was over, when she had watched the sufferings of Jesus to the last, and had helped to lay Him in His tomb, when all her service of love was done, her heart was still busy about His memory. She went and brought spices and ointments, and rested on the Sabbath-day, intending to anoint Him on the morrow. Beautiful and wonderful fidelity of tender and grateful love. Jesus was dead, what could now avail these ministries of devotion to His memory? Yet they were due and sweet. She owed them to Him to whom she owed all; and though
He should know nothing of them, they were sweet to her for His sake. In this we see the character of generous contrition. From the hour that she washed our Saviour's feet with her tears, arid wiped them with the hair of her head, she laid aside for ever the vanity and luxury with which she had offended His Divine Sanctity. Thenceforward all her life was a perpetual mortification of her natural self. St. Peter, after he had wept bitterly for his three denials, entered upon a life of reparation to his Divine Master, which had its proportionate end and crown in his inverted cross on Mount Janiculum. St. Paul says, that in him first Christ Jesus had shewn forth all patience,1 forasmuch as he had been " a persecutor and contumelious;" therefore, he spent a long life in reparation, which he describes as "always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus."t His long life of supernatural toil and suffering was crowned at last by the lictor's sword, at the Salvian Waters, with the diadem of martyrdom.
Such was the spirit of reparation among the disciples of Jesus, free, spontaneous, and unsparing even unto death. In this we have a beautiful example of the spirit of satisfaction, which is infused and perfected in the Sacrament of Penance.
Now, the Church teaches us that the only condition to absolution is contrition, including confession either in fact or in desire, so that satisfaction, or the penance which follows after, perfects, but is not of the essence of contrition. Though it be imposed, nevertheless it is willingly accepted, and, therefore, is a free and spontaneous return for a free and spontaneous pardon. And the effect of it is to expiate and to make reparation; to expiate the pains due to us for the sins which have been absolved by a voluntary chastisement of self, and to make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which we have wounded by our ingratitudes. Such is the penance imposed on us in our absolution. But it also sets before us what ought to be the life-long fruit of this Sacrament. It teaches that all the life of those who have been absolved ought to be spent in satisfaction for the past.
First, I will try to explain what this spirit of reparation consists of, and then will shew how it is infused and perfected in the Sacrament of Penance.
- It consists then, first, in an indignation against ourselves. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, expresses this as follows: — " That you were made sorrowful according to God, how great carefulness it worketh in you: yea defence, yea indignation, yea fear, yea desire, yea zeal, yea revenge."2 They, indeed, felt this indignation for the shame brought on them by the sins of another. How much more reason for keener indignation have we for the sins which we have each one committed against God; for the sins of deliberation whereby we have grieved and resisted His Holy Spirit, contradicted His will, broken His law, and outraged His love. God made us for Himself — for His love and for His glory. He made us capable of knowing and loving, worshipping and serving, of praising and glorifying Him, but we have robbed and defrauded Him. We have borne bitter fruits or have stood barren before Him. Is it possible to fail of the end of our creation more than we have failed?
Moreover, we have need to be indignant with ourselves for our habitual inclination to self, for the love and worship of our own will, for our waste of life and time, and the natural powers which God has given us: for the neglect of our visitations and opportunities, of graces, and of sacraments. If we examine one of our sins of commission, or of omission, in the light of God's presence, and by the love of the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus, or in the light of the Holy Ghost, we shall find abundant matter for indignation against ourselves: if for nothing else, for our instability in good. We seem to have so little affinity to it, and so little union with it, that we vary and waver between good and evil, as if they were alike to us, and indifferent in themselves.
Now. any one who has attained such a knowledge of himself, as I have endeavoured to explain in the last two chapters, must feel spring up in him shame, and zeal, and indignation against himself, with a desire to humble and punish himself, and to take, as St. Paul says, a revenge.
Next to this comes a sense of gratitude. Blessed Alvarez used to say, that his faults were like so many windows which let in the light of the love of God upon his soul, for each one of them became a fresh evidence of the patience and tenderness of God towards him. How much more the sins of which we have been guilty, and the faults which we carry to confession every week. The love and compassion of God which, like a great stream, is continually descend ing upon us every day, would awaken gratitude in a stone. He raised us from spiritual death in Baptism, and has raised us again and again in Penance, sometimes, as St. Augustine says, like Jairus's daughter, just dead; sometimes like the widow's son, already carried out to burial; sometimes like Lazarus, four days buried in the grave. He has received us back again like the prodigal, not once only but many times. He has reinvested us with our lost inheritance, and, perhaps called us to a higher path in His kingdom, and given us special illuminations, and special union with Himself. If these things do not elicit gratitude we must be dead indeed. Now, the Sacrament of Penance is the special manifestation of these gifts and graces, and, therefore, the special means of awaking us to a sense of them.
A third element in the spirit of reparation, is generosity. And this is luminously manifested to us in the sovereign grace of absolution. In it God gives us pardon with a fulness, a freeness, a facility, and inexhaustible frequency which exceeds all we can ask or think. Even the most soiled and unworthy He restores to His peace and love. Our Heavenly Father keeps back nothing from us. All that is communicable He gives to us. Jesus gives us all that He can part with. The Holy Ghost gives Himself and all things again and again, seventy-times-seven, as often as we turn and repent. Now this ought, at least, to awake in us some generosity in return. At least we ought to be as generous in forgiving others as He is in forgiving us.
If God gives Himself to us, surely we cannot be slow to give of our substance in alms. If He should call us to forsake all and to follow in His steps, we could not refuse to rise up and to go after Him. If He should draw us to give ourselves to Him, as He has given Himself for us, how could we hang back?
4, Another disposition included in the spirit of reparation, is a hatred not only of the least actual sin but also of lukewarmness. Our absolution shews us how great a price was paid for us; how much it cost Him to institute this Sacrament of His free compassion on our behalf. It is the fruit of His Agony in the garden and of His Passion upon the Cross. Nothing could have obtained it for us but His most Precious Blood. This sets sin before us as an insult to His Cross — as a wound in the Sacred Heart — as a betrayal of Jesus, sometimes for a piece of money, or for a pleasure with fair professions of fidelity, that is, we also betray Him by a kiss. If He loved us so as to consume Himself for us in the fire of His charity, how without great personal sin can we be lukewarm towards Him? Cold returns for warm friendship are intolerable among men. Neglect will separate those who have never otherwise offended each other. So between us and Jesus. He is all love for us, and we have treated Him as if He had done nothing for our good and suffered nothing in our stead. It is very slowly that we come to perceive this fault in our hearts, but when once perceived, we know and we feel that we can never do enough for Him. All that we do seems feeble and cold.
- Lastly, the spirit of reparation contains in it a love of the Cross. Jesus loved it for our sakes. If we love Him, we must love it for His sake. We laid it upon Him by our sins, at least we ought to be willing to lay it upon ourselves in reparation. St. Paul says, " They that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences."3 First, in Penance and the mortification of the sin that dwells in us; and next, in the life of reparation which springs from a generous love of our Divine Master.
For this cause, the crosses which come upon us from the hand of God ought to be borne with submission and with sweetness, and the crosses which come from the hand of men ought likewise to be received with patience, and even with gladness. They do but conform us to Jesus in the two great perfections of His humility. To be like Him is necessary to salvation, and it is also sweet to those who love Him. Nay, if we be generous we shall choose to be like Him in His humiliation and in his Cross, rather than to be prosperous and in honour. It is a hard lesson, but a true one. Even if we knew that we might be saved with equal certainty in a life of fair days, and bright lights, and smooth, even ways, a generous love to our Divine Lord would make us choose the shadow of His life and the sharpness of His path, because it unites us more closely to Him if only by imitation and by the evidence of our love and gratitude. If a brother or a friend were in the field of battle, it would be still lawful for us to enjoy the pleasant things of home as when they were with us. But an instinct of generous affection would make us turn from pleasures and find consolation even in privations, as a way of sharing in hardship with those we love, and manifesting our love to them. If this be true of kinsmen and friends in the imperfect state of our humanity, how much more of Him who is not only our Friend and Brother, but also our Saviour and our Redeemer, our Lord and our God.
And this which ought to bind us, if it were only by love arid gratitude, has another motive more personal to us. A life of generous penance is to all, even to the most mature, the safer path. St. Vincent of
Paul used to say, " If we had one foot in Heaven, yet if we cease to mortify ourselves, before we could draw the other after it, we should be in danger of losing our soul." St. Paul says, " All things are lawful to me, but all things are not expedient."4 There are many things which I might lawfully do which would not help me to overcome my faults or avoid temptations, or sanctify my heart, or save my soul. I am free to enjoy much that is fair, and bright, and sweet, and in itself harmless, but it would riot add a grace to my soul, nor a spark of the love of God, nor a fibre of strength, to my will. It would not build me up in the life of God. Now, observe, St. Paul does not here try those things by the harm they would do him, nor by the danger he might incur They would do him no good; they would add nothing to his state before God; and they might become occasions of some entanglement and temptation. Therefore he adds, " All things are lawful to me, but I will not be brought under the power of any;"5 that is I will keep my liberty by not using it. I will not so use it as to give to anything a power over my peace and tranquility of heart, or over the freedom of my soul from all things, but Jesus, to whom alone I am in bondage in the sweet service of the spirit of life.
There is need of few words to show how the Sacrament of Penance infuses and perfects this spirit of generous love. For it requires of us a firm resolution of the will against all sin, and it imposes on us a penance, in satisfaction for our sins. Now, this penance might be long and rigorous, extending over our whole life; but though it were ever so extended, even until death, it would not make adequate satisfaction for the sins we have committed. How much less adequate reparation to the love of Jesus which we have outraged by commission and omission, by wounds and by coldness.
The practice of the Church in these latter times has been to impose penances which are both light and consoling, such as devotion to the ever-blessed Trinity, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or our Blessed Mother — a few prayers to be said once over. Often this is all, and the world mocks at it as a superstition and a nullity; and the pharisaic religion of these latter days treats it as lax and antinomian. " But wisdom is justified by all her children."6 It is especially the Sacrament of Penance, with these light and benign penances, which awakens the spirit of generous love, and this will do all the rest. It shows us first the price He paid for us — how He suffered for us a Passion equal to, and far beyond, the guilt of all our sins, and of the sins of the whole world. We see, too, how great was the guilt of our sins, which nothing but the most precious Blood of the Incarnate Son could cancel: how great must be the ingratitude and the hatefulness of our sin, which pierced the Son of God with His unknown and unspeakable sorrows. Every absolution bears this witness to us. Next it shows us how little
He exacts from us. He requires indeed that we should come to Him, that we should leave off sinning, accuse ourselves at His feet, and promise to sin no more. Less than this He could not ask, and no more than this He requires of the greatest sinner. He thereby puts us upon the "law of liberty," of which St. James writes, " So speak ye, and so do as being to be judged by the law of liberty."7 He puts us upon probation of our gratitude, generosity, and love. He pardons us at once, even before we fulful our penance. Our absolution does not depend upon its fulfilment; and the little penance we perform He not only accepts but elevates to a higher order, and invests with a great efficiency. In this way He appeals to our generosity. His own generosity upbraids us. If He be so generous to us, what ought we be to Him?
And, finally, it inspires by the grace of the holy Spirit a desire to offer ourselves to Him in reparation. What is past we cannot undo. What remains then but for the
G future to love Him with generosity, and to give to Him not the fruit only, but the tree with the fruit, that is ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a " living sacrifice pleasing unto God;"8 and for this we have many motives. First, because of our sins; next, for the sin of those whom we have tempted: again, for the sins of all, more especially Christians and Catholics, and finally, for the Passion of Jesus Christ.
Lastly, the spirit of reparation has a great reward, not only in the life to come, but also in this. None are so peaceful, so free, so happy, as the generous. The narrow-hearted are always scrupulous and in bondage to themselves. They have, as St. Thomas of Villanova says, " Intellectum in coelo, voluntatem in coeno " — they are drawn up by high visions and by the intellectual perception of the blessedness of a devoted and holy life; but they are also drawn down by the soft, alluring, and foolish attachments of taste, custom, fancy, and the fear of the world; and between these two they waver and are distracted, and suffer a perpetual strain like men upon the rack. None are more restless and depressed, than people who take their full liberty in all things which are not sin. They are always wishing for the higher, and falling into the lower, path. They begin with courage to choose the better and the nobler part, and they end in a cowardice which makes them shrink from the least denial of their own will, or limitation of their own liberty. They shrink with fear from an austere life, and yet know that lax lives are always uneasy and unsafe.
Happy are they who can make up their mind. The decided are always calm; even in the midst of trouble they know their path, and their way is clear before them. They who generously choose the higher and austerer life, enter into a great peace. It is sweet, because it is chosen for Jesus' sake. At first, they shrink perhaps from natural infirmity, and the will fears what the light of faith dictates, and what its own choice decides. But the Holy Ghost is a generous
Spirit, and never calls a soul to higher paths, without elevating the will freely and generously to choose them. The Cross becomes sweet when it is chosen, and light when it is lifted on the shoulder.
If the life of the generous he happy their death is blessed. The time of their weakness is the time of His power; when they sink under the burden of mortality, then is the hour of His special generosity, and of their ineffable consolation.
And yet, not only in life and death, but most of all, the reward of the generous is laid up for them in Purgatory. The spirit of reparation gives to their penance a wonderful power of expiation. A few years of loving sorrow, with gratitude and self-chastisement, will expiate we know not what debt of pain. The more penance here the less Purgatory hereafter. Immediately after death S. Peter of Alcantara was seen ascending with great glory into Heaven, and out of the midst of his joy he said: " See how great a glory a few years of penance bring." Nor is generosity reserved for Saints. Mary Magdalen is the type of generous sorrow. A heroic act not only of martyrdom but of reparation is enough to absolve all guilt and to expiate all pain. In the life of St. Vincent Ferrer we read of a great and habitual sinner who at last made his confession to him. It was a terrible life of long and complicated wickedness. When the penitent expected long years of mortification and heavy penances, St. Vincent bade him fast every Friday for a year. The penitent begged him not to trifle with a case so desperate as his, believing that the Saint was speaking in irony. St. Vincent commuted the penance to the seven penitential psalms. Once more the penitent begged him not to treat him with levity. The Saint then bade him say once a Pater, Ave, and Gloria. And that night the penitent sinner died, and the Saint saw him in vision ascending to the heavenly glory. The love of God had broken up the fountains of love and sorrow in his heart, and his nature gave way under the compassion of Jesus. The agony of his self-accusation, and the will to expiate, had made a perfect reparation for the sins of a life.
And, lastly, those little privations of a generous love will receive from His hands a great reward. There is no humility and less generosity in saying, " If only I can be saved I shall be content." Our salvation is not the final end of our being, but His glory; and if we aim at being saved at the least glory to our Redeemer, we may easily lose our souls. For what is the greater crown? It is -not the visible splendour of Heavenly Court, but the internal and essential glory of the Saints. It is to be nearer to Him, to know Him more fully, to be more like to him, and to love Him with a more ardent and eternal love. And this is measured by our state in this life, for glory is but grace made perfect, the fruit of the blossom which now is. This is the thought which, out of the feeble and fearful, has made martyrs, confessors, penitents, mission-aries, priests, and nuns. The highest aspirations are often united with the weakest natures. Our natural infirmity shrinks when our will is inflexible. Jesus in His agony is the example of what they have to endure who make satisfaction for sin to God, and He shows us that our suffering does not take away from the perfection of our submission or our sacrifice. They whom Jesus calls to martyrdom suffer and exult: their lower nature is wounded with ineffable pain, but their higher is in the foretaste of the Beatific Vision. All who have confessed Jesus before men have had to suffer shame arid sorrow, but they chose it with gladness for His sake. Penitents have abandoned all that was dearest to them with joy not to be told for the sweetness of making reparation to him. Sons have left their home and all its charities, dear as life, to expiate, as missionaries among the heathen, the sins of a life not soiled by a mortal sin. Youths have with gladness forsaken the world and all its hopes to take the solitary yoke of Jesus in the sacerdotal life. Daughters, to whom all affections ministered, have turned from all to serve Him in a cloister, or in a rude and exposed life among the souls for which He died; and yet all these have had moments of irresolution and fear, of shrinking, and relapse, in which nothing saved them fron falling from their higher aspirations, and losing the vocation of God, but the one deep, still, but constraining thought, sweet and persuasive, that to choose the lot which Jesus chose on earth, would be more pleasing to the Sacred Heart of their Master and their Lord. This one thought of generous love to Him, who has done all for us, for whom we can do nothing, who, nevertheless, accepts the nothing we do, and by working " in us both to will and to accomplish,"9 gives it a power of reparation. This alone has made the earth to blossom like the rose and the lily, and has illuminated the Church with the lights of sanctity, and brought the multitude, whom no man can number, to the throne of Jesus, and to His Eternal joy.
Footnotes
Chapter 5 of 6