Each of us is God’s prodigal child. We run away from home, and we misspend the gifts that our Father has lavished upon us. In our choices, we prefer the enticements of a foreign land to the love and freedom that children enjoy in the household of their parents. All this takes place whenever we sin. We return to our Father whenever we return to the sacrament of penance.
Yet, inevitably, we sin again, and we come home again. Unlike the prodigal son, we will not know our definitive home coming until the moment of our death – which, ideally, should come soon after our last confession.
Till that moment, we must live our lives as if in “a far away country” – distant from our true home – a strange country, delightful to the senses, and full of good things. It is so delightful, in fact, that it could make us forget our homeland.
Again we are like the prodigal son. It is by our Father’s kindness that we may visit this country. We could not have gotten here without his riches to pay the way. We could not survive here without our share of His fortune. For God created the world where we live as strangers, and he sustains it in existence; and He created us, too.
We must live in this world, then, as good children of our Father, even though we are far away from home and our Father will not compel us to do so.
Sojourners’ Truth
Throughout their life on earth, Christians live as if in exile from heaven. An anonymous Christian of the second century put it this way: “Inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities… they follow the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct… . They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.
Even foreign land is like a native country to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers” (Epistle to Diognetus 5)
God made us for heaven, but He made us on earth. For now, heaven is separated from us not by light-years of space, but by our sins. We will not know the comforts of our heavenly home until we come faithfully to the end of our estrangement and are purged of our sins. Till that day, we live, to one degree or another, in exile.
Even so, God our Father has created our place of exile, and it’s a good place. Indeed, He made the world so that its delights – although they can never quite satisfy us – will remind us of our true home in heaven. All earthly goods are mere samples of heavenly perfections. The spiritual writer Fr. John Hugo put it this way:
The beauty, the goodness, the truth, every excellence contained in creatures is… infinitely multiplied in the boundless goodness of God… . We glorify God through creatures when we see them as samples or rays of the divine beauty and goodness, and therefore a stairway and means to approaching God and loving Him, the source of all created good. Thereafter this love of God the supreme good embraces all the creatures that we use or touch or handle… . [W]e do not seek them as our final goal, we do not place our happiness in them, yet they become a means of loving Him Who is our true and final good, our joy, and our real fulfillment.
God designed the things of this world so that, by their inability to satisfy us, they should impel us ever more toward heaven.
They should, but they don’t necessarily. For we are men and women and not beasts or trees. The achievement of our final goal does not come instinctively to us, as it does from squirrels, lions, and dogs – or inexorably, as it does for volcanoes, continents, and stars. Reason and nature might indicate what’s best for us. But we are still free to choose otherwise. A doctor or confessor might tell us clearly and explicitly what we need to do. But we may still do something else. We must choose the good freely. And there remains the matter of our own will and intellect, which are wounded by concupiscence.
The delights of this world have a power to bewitch us. Rightly ordered, they should whet our appetite for God. But, because of concupiscence, we tend to develop disordered appetites for the earthly goods themselves. We want more of them than we really need. We become addicted to them. Soon, we would choose them instead of what is truly good for us. We would rather sin than leave an earthly desire unfulfilled.
The classic definition of sin is “a turning away from God and turning toward creatures.” It’s not that creatures are bad; in fact, they’re very good, since they were created by God. We choose badly, however, when we decide to enjoy creatures rather than to love God, do His will, and follow His commandments. To put a creature in God’s place is what our ancestors meant by the word idolatry. All sin is, in some sense, a form of idolatry: to prefer the creature to the creator, the gift to the giver.
This world is so delightful that it’s easy for us to “go for the gusto” in our fleeting earthly moments and to forget our eternal destiny. We forget that we are exiles, far from home, and we wish we could just settle down comfortably in this land – no matter what our new citizenship might cost us.
Freedom from Slavery in Egypt
It is no accident that the plot of salvation history turns most often on stories of exodus, exile, pilgrimage, and endless wandering. Adam and Eve got themselves expelled from the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:23-24). As a consequence of his fratricide, Cain had to leave his homeland and live in fear in the Land of Wandering (Gen 4: 12-14). For the sins of the world, Noah had to put out in a boat while waters deluged all lands (Gen 9). The citizens of Babel rose up in pride against the Lord God, who “scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth” (Gen 11:8). Abraham dwelt in prosperity in Ur of the Chaldeans till God called him to make an improbable journey to a distant land (Gen 12:1).
God’s people are always en route. There is no standing still in their earthly life. They (and we) are either progressing on pilgrimage toward God and toward His promised land, or drifting, wandering, or fleeing elsewhere.
The early Christians saw these historical events as symbols, or “types,” of spiritual realities. The Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt represented the state of humanity in bondage to original sin. The Israelites could not break free through their own efforts. God had to deliver them miraculously. And, even then, the chosen people had to subdue many enemies, without and within. For, over the course of 430 years (see Ex 12:40), even the best of the Israelites has assimilated too well to Egyptian culture. They had developed habits of mind, body, and spirit that had to be overcome. That is why You commanded them to sacrifice certain kinds of animals – the very animals that pagan Egypt considered divine. The Israelites’ sacrifices were a violent repudiation of their former infidelities to God, when they had adopted their captors’ superstitions. God knew that habits developed over centuries could only be eradicated with difficulty. Thus he imposed upon Israel a demanding law, an all-encompassing regimen that minutely prescribed new customs for diet, hygiene, sex, and worship.
The new way was difficult for the chosen people; indeed, to many, the years of wandering in the desert seemed far worse than the centuries of oppression and forced labor. They grew nostalgic for the time of slavery, when at least their bellies had been full. “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt. … Why did we come forth out of Egypt?” (Num 11:18, 20).
And it wasn’t only their bellies that were groaning after their departure from Egypt. They also built a golden image of Apis, a bull calf, the Egyptian god of virility, and they conducted an orgy there in the desert (Ex 32:1-6).
Israel was it’s own worst enemy, but certainly not its only one. On the way to their occupation of the promised land, the Israelites had to conquer seven mighty nations that opposed their advance.
All of this, according to the fathers of the Church, is like the situation of humanity. We are born slaves. That is why Israel’s servile stint with Egypt is a typological picture of the soul in original sin. It’s also why Israel being led through the Red Sea is a symbol of baptism (see 1 Cor 10:1-4). God has set us free through baptism, from the slavery of original sin, but we still suffer its after effects in lingering concupiscence. So it is only with difficulty that we give up sinful habits. Moreover, our corrupt nature continues to hanker after the sensual pleasures that accompany a life of slavery to sin. If we are to break free of the land of our exile, we must put to death such longings – our concupiscence. We must sacrifice, in our lives, the created things that sinners tend to make into their idols.
We need to discipline ourselves to resist temptation. We need to train ourselves to make war against the world, the concupiscent flesh, and the devil. The fathers of the Church pointed out that, like the Israelites, we too must conquer seven “nations” before we ourselves can lay claim to the promised land of heaven. The pagan nations represented the traditional seven deadly sins: pride, anger, gluttony, lust, laziness, envy, and greed.
There is, according to the early Christians, a second great historical event that symbolizes human sinfulness. It is Judah’s captivity in Babylon. Though this exile was much briefer than the enslavement in Egypt, it was no less deadly to the Jewish way of life.
By the sixth century B.C., the chosen people were weakened and divided from many generations of civil strife. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had little trouble conquering the land of Judah and making it a vassal state to Babylon. He drained the land of its best and brightest citizens, deporting them to his land, to serve his kingdom. There, for seventy years, they served well and were rewarded and respected for their work. Many Jewish men took Babylonian wives. Many tradesmen learned new skills from their Babylonian colleagues. The captive people made great strides, for example, in the science of astronomy, the profession of banking, and the technology of coinage.
The chosen people prospered in the land of their captivity. Perhaps they did too well there, for some began to abandon hope of returning to Judea. They had grown accustomed to Babylonian language, Babylonian streets, Babylonian ways. Again, as in Egypt, they began to slacken in their religious observance and to adopt the ways of their captors. Those who remained faithful to the God of Israel had to struggle mightily, invoking a curse upon themselves if they should grow too comfortable in their captivity:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! (Ps 137:5-6)
The faithful exile refuses to allow himself even legitimate consolations, for fear that they will ease the pain of his separation from home. He denies himself the joy of singing his favorite songs “by the waters of Babylon” (v.1).
As Egyptian slavery was a type of original sin, so – for the Church fathers – Babylonian captivity represented actual sin. It’s one thing to be born as an Israelite infant in Egypt. It’s quite another to be carried off to exile as a direct consequence of your actual sins. Babylon was a captivity brought on by the choice of the captives, and then sustained by their choice. As they grew sated by material comforts in a pagan land, they forgot what it was like to be free in their homeland. Why should they trade their prosperity, security, and comfort for the rough and risky task of resettling and rebuilding Jerusalem?
Why, too, should sinners turn away from fraud – from lying to the IRS – when it’s so profitable? Why turn away from gluttony when the finest goods are close at hand? Why turn away from anger when the cleverest putdowns come so readily to mind?
It can be comfortable to remain in sin. But Babylon’s comfort comes at a cost: our freedom, our citizenship, our inheritance.
Self Denial
“Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4)
We are exiles in the world, and we must never lose sight of that fact. We must never forget who we are, whence we have come, and where we are going. We must live on earth, but we must live for Heaven.
So, like the chosen people, we must “put to death” the idolatry that remains in us. Like the Babylonian captives, we must deny ourselves not only sinful pleasures, but a certain measure of legitimate pleasures; for these can serve as the bait in the world’s trap. It is by our growing attraction and attachment to worldly goods that we turn, by ever greater degrees, away from God.
This is why Jesus taught the apostles to fast. This is why the apostles continued to fast after Jesus ascended to Heaven. This is why self-denial has always been a hallmark of true Christianity, made the focus of the forty-day Lenten season every year.
This is also why Jesus could say, in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you poor… Blessed are you that hunger… Blessed are you that weep… Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil” (Lk 6:20-23). All of these calamities, He said, are cause for rejoicing.
We should not miss the shock value of Jesus’ words. Even after twenty centuries of Christian preaching, they are still a radical reversal of worldly values. Like the sacrifice of Egypt’s sacred animals, the Beatitudes represent a “normative inversion”; they turn our expectations upside down. We instinctively feel it’s a curse to be impoverished, hungry, grieving, and slandered. But Jesus presents all these circumstances as moments of blessing. Suffering teaches us detachment from the goods of this world, and so it frees us to attach ourselves to the goods of Heaven. This is true of suffering that is actively sought (as is in the case of fasting, keeping a vigil, or making a pilgrimage) or suffering passively endured (as in the case of a toothache, a thunderstorm, or a train that is running late). Suffering enables us to say with Saint Paul, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse [literally, “as dung”], in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 4:7-8).
All created things are good, simply because God made them. But even the greatest delights – sex, books, chocolate, coffee, wine – are nearer in value to trash or sewage than they are to God!
A Test for the Blessed
As we grow detached from things, we come (with God’s help) to master our desires, and we give the mastery over to God. Discipline and divine grace heal the intellect and the will of the effects of concupiscence. We can begin to see things clearly.
And the more clearly we see, the better we can face the daily temptations to turn away from God and toward created things. It we must choose between Christ and dung, there’s only one sane rational choice.
Few people grow so detached as to see matters that way, all the time. Yet that is what God wants from each of us, and He will deny it to no one who asks and is willing to receive the grace, the blessing.
When we face a choice between suffering and sin, we are facing a trial, a test, an ordeal, just as Adam did, just as the Israelites did in the desert, just as the Jews did in Babylon. If we choose momentary comfort, security, and safety over eternal love, God will respect our choice. If we choose momentary suffering for the sake of eternal love, we will draw nearer to the happiness of the homeland, of Heaven. We will grow more Godlike in the bosom of God Himself.
We are driven by the appetites we have cultivated. We travel in the direction to which we have turned our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our eyes. But if we wish to reach our destination – if we wish one day to be home in heaven – we have to turn away from earthly attachments and turn directly Godward. It won’t do us any good to turn halfway; that still points us the wrong way. Until we break off our attachments, our conversion will not be complete.
Such sacrifice is never easy. An Israelite making a sin offering had to subdue the animal victim, bind it, slaughter it, gut it, cut it up, and sing some hymns. Most of the sacrifices we make won’t be so bloody, but we shouldn’t expect them to be any easier. A bull can be easier to subdue than a body warped by concupiscence. Then, as now, such sacrifice requires effort, strength, expense, time.
Israel’s animal sacrifice was a sign and foreshadowing of the sacrifice to come. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, “Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for me” (Heb 10:5). We, too, offer the desires of our body, the comforts, and the delights, in sacrifice for our sins, and for the sake of our love for God.
“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart” (Ps 51:17). If we make this minimal beginning, an act of contrition from the heart, God’s grace will make up for the rest.
And if you have any doubt where such sacrifice should best begin, just visit the nearest confessional. Conversion is possible without the sacraments, but it’s arduous. The grace of the sacraments eases our way.
In most church documents, confession is called the sacrament of penance. We use the terms interchangeably to denote the sacrament, but they are not synonymous. Confession describes the act of telling one’s sin. Penance describes two things: an attitude and an action.
Penance, considered as an attitude, describes the hatred of one’s sins. Penance, in this case, is a necessary condition for sacramental confession. We have to be sorry for our sins; we have to despise them, to some degree.
When our attitude of penance is perfect – when we hate our sins because they have offended God, Whom we love – then we confess our sins with true contrition. Most of the time, though, we have mixed motives for hating our sins. We hate them because we are ashamed of them, or because they make us feel bad, or because we are afraid of being punished, or because they have caused ill effects on our body, mind, finances or relationships. This imperfect hatred of our sins is called attrition, and it will suffice for a valid confession, though we should always strive for perfect penance.
When the attitude of penance is habitual, we say that penance is a virtue. This virtue is integral to Christian life, to grow in the virtue of penance by making acts of penance – just as we grow up in the virtue of kindness, courage, and industry by repeating many small acts of kindness, courage, and hard work. The virtue of penance, then, becomes a part of our everyday living, a natural and supernatural habitat for the sacrament that shares its name.
Acts of penance, however, are not limited to sacramental confessions. Such acts include any act of self-denial offered to make amends for our sins or the sins of others. Acts of penance are not limited to fasting, vigils, and pilgrimages. There are many more. Indeed the Christian who has the virtue of penance is always eager to make sacrifices for the sake of others, and most of these will be quiet and common actions – the times when we inconvenience ourselves for the sake of another person’s comfort, pleasure, or consolation.
Perhaps we suggest going to the movies, because we know that is what our companions would prefer, even though we would really rather go to a ball game.
We deny ourselves a second piece of pie – even though it is the most delicious we’ve ever tasted – so that someone else might enjoy it instead. Or, on the other hand, we eagerly ask for a second piece of pie – even though it is the worst we have ever tasted – so that a first-time baker’s feelings won’t be hurt.
We linger for a few minutes with a co-worker or neighbor whom we find dull or annoying. Instead of excusing ourselves for a quick exit, we give our time and our close attention.
We complete mundane tasks carefully and promptly, even though we’d rather get a root canal than fill out another five page form for our employer.
The best acts of penance are those so ordinary that they go unnoticed. Our best days, and our happiest days, are those that are filled with such actions.
It’s important that we get this right, because many people today – even some Christians – misunderstand Christian self-denial. They try to dismiss it as psychologically sick, world hating, dour, joyless, and masochistic. No doubt, there are Christians who are psychologically sick, world hating, dour, joyless, and masochistic, but these characteristics are neither the cause nor the effect of Christian self-denial.
The first thing to get straight is that vigorous self-denial is an essential part of the Christian faith. Jesus said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Mt 16:24). “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple” (Lk 14:27). Self-denial, clearly, is not optional; there’s no alternative, self-indulgent way of salvation available to humankind.
The next thing to clear up is that self-denial is most certainly not a denial of the goodness of the world. Christians sacrifice the best of things not because they think the world is evil and must be put to death, but because they know the world is very good – so good that it can distract us from what is far better, thus detouring us from our way home to the Father. Like the Israelites, we may wish to return to Egypt or to dally in Babylon. We may choose to enjoy any number of pleasant pastimes rather than go to confession, go to Mass, or go to visit our grandmother in the nursing home. Again, sin is not a matter of our choosing “evil matter” over “good spirit.” It’s always a matter of preferring a lesser good instead of a greater good – or instead of goodness itself.
Finally, we must assert that pain is not valuable for its own sake. Christians take no pleasure in pain. We do, however, find blessing in pain, as Christ did.
Can there be any doubt that the first Christians followed Jesus’ admonition to lead a life of penance and self-denial? Consider only Saint Paul who wrote: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24).
If anyone should wish to impose a purely spiritual or metaphorical reading on that text, Paul gets more specific elsewhere. For example, he willingly accepted that hardships that came his way, from the everyday irritants to the cruelest tortures: “labors,… imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Cor 11:23-27).
Paul took all of this in a spirit of penance. Yet he did not stop there. He actively undertook other hardships, imposing still more severe discipline on his flesh. “I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:26-27).
Paul did not give in to self-indulgence or the easy life. Quite the contrary: He knew that the body had to be returned to strict control of the mind, the soul, and reason, and that this was no easy task. It required a certain severe determination, which he spoke of in the strongest terms. “If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live” (Rom 8:13). Put to death- that shocking phrase is a single word in Latin and in earlier English translations of the Scripture. It comes down to mortification, which is synonymous with bodily penance.
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col 3:5).
Acts of self-denial –mortification and penance – destroy the obstacles to divine love and our sharing in the divine life. They smash the idols in our life, so that nothing can distract us from loving God.
Think of this in terms of the Israelites’ experience. In order to put Egypt behind them, they had to experience the “normative inversion” of sacrificing their captors’ sacred animals. The chosen people had to “put to death” the idolatry that had once held them captive.
When we offer acts of penance to God, we practice a similar sort of normative inversion. We “put to death” the desires that captivate our mind. For what is it that arrests our attention and keeps it locked up? Food? Sex? Money? Material possessions – a house, a car, furniture?
Whatever holds us a willing captive is an idol, and it will soon demand sacrifices from us. Idols, too, will demand a “putting to death” because, like Yahweh, idols are jealous gods. Think about our modern idols. For the sake of work, many people eagerly sacrifice their health, their time, their family. For the sake of unbridled sex, many risk their reputation, their health, their marriages, and even their lives. For the sake of gluttonous consumption, many people are willing to trade years of their lives. I won’t tire you with statistics, though I could. (Sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic. More than 61 percent of American adults are overweight, and 27 percent of them are obese.)
We all know the captivating power of these idols, the hold they have on our lives. We all know the sacrifices that they will eventually demand from us; the surgeon general tells us so, with some regularity. Moreover, we’re even willing to recognize that we need to do something about these idols – put them to death. There are few truths as self evident as the old Christian adage: The body wants more than it needs, so we must give it less than it wants. We know we need to diet. We need to spend less time at work and more at home. We need to be less preoccupied with sex. And so on. But these natural solutions are not enough. For there’s an absurd human tendency to idolize the natural instrument that destroys our idols. The ex-drinker, ex-smoker, ex-chubby person, ex-philanderer too often becomes an obnoxious and fanatical devotee of the fad diet or the twelve-step program that “saved” him.
We mustn’t fall into that trap. That is why we need to supernaturalize our self-denial – make it penance – offer it to God, the one true God, the only God who saves. Idols must be replaced by a pure and divine devotion, and our devotion must be purified by our attitude of penance and acts of penance.
The Big Picture
Context is key here. If we don’t see the big picture, sacrifice will make no sense to us, or it will make a perverted sort of sense.
The context of our sacrifice is a relationship, a personal relationship, a love relationship, a family relationship, a covenant relationship.
It is not odd for family members to make sacrifices for the sake of one another. A parent’s life is fairly defined by such sacrifices. A dad “puts to death” the things that keep him from loving his children as he should. A mom “puts to death” her peeves, her comforts, her cravings, so that she can be free to raise children who are happy, wise, and strong. A child, over time, learns to subdue bodily cravings and impulses for the sake of a healthy family life (potty training, regular sleep habits, no eating between meals). The child, in turn, grows into an adult, a caregiver, who must give time and attention to Mom and Dad, as age and illness take their toll.
Love requires that we make sacrifices for the sake of our beloved. A man who is smitten with a woman doesn’t think twice about staying up late to write her a love poem. He doesn’t hesitate to offer her his gloves on a bitter winter day, even if his own hands are nearly frozen. If she says she dislikes his sweater or his cologne, he moves the offending matter to the back of the closet or the bottom of the trash can. A man in love will double his heroic efforts if he has somehow offended his beloved. He wants to make up posthaste, with not a minute to spare or for delay.
All of these are natural acts of self-denial that people offer spontaneously for the sake of love. For those who are in love, sacrifice comes more easily, and even the pains endured are thought of as being sweet. There is no questioning the necessity of detachment from anything that presents an obstacle to the relationship.
Thus, we see that sacrifice, self-denial, penance, and mortification are hardly odd or unusual activities in the natural order. We are willing to sacrifice for goals we can see. We must learn to sacrifice for the sake of a love unseen, putting to death the sin, temptation, and the disorder of concupiscence, all of which render us likely to offend our Beloved.
On Earth as in Heaven
Sacrifice, however, is not merely negative. It is not just a “killing”. It is also giving. Our small sacrifices are symbolic of the total self-giving that is essential to love. People in love give themselves entirely.
Indeed, the Church teaches that human love shows us the “certain likes between the union of the divine Persons” and humanity, which is made in the divine image. When we give ourselves in love, we imitate God. For “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16), and the essence of love is life-giving.
Consider the inner life of the Trinity. The Father pours out the fullness of Himself; He holds nothing of His divinity back. He gives all His life. He eternally fathers the Son. The Father is, above all else, a life-giving lover, and the Son is His perfect image. So what else is the Son but a life-giving lover? And the Son dynamically images the Father for all eternity, pouring out the life He’s received from the Father; He gives that life back to the Father as a perfect expression of thanks and love. That life and love, which the Son receives from the Father and returns to the Father, is the Holy Spirit.
When God became man in Jesus Christ, His life of earth was an image in time of the divine life in eternity. Jesus’ life was a complete gift of Himself, given over the course of thirty-some years. Everything within His life – His forgiveness, healing, teaching, preaching – was an incarnation of the transcendent love that abides eternally.
The love that is God is the only love that can satisfy us and make us happy. Our human loves themselves will fail us, through human weakness, imperfection, or death. Human loves – and the limited happiness they bring – are just a hint of the love for which God created us. We will not be happy, we will not know love, until we love like God, until we love as gods (Ps 82:6; see also Jn 10:34), partakers in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). Man, says the Church, “is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”
If we understand penance in this context, it makes sense. For we cannot imagine love without sacrifice. We cannot truly love this person unless we “put to death” that vice, that obstacle, that peeve or preference.
This is why the ancient covenants required sacrifice. The covenants created a family bond, and the sacrifice was symbolic of the former bonds that were now severed, now put to death. The covenant was also symbolic of the total self-gift, without which love and family life are impossible.
Removing Obstacles to God’s Love
Penance becomes warped – psychologically sickly, world hating, dour, joyless, or masochistic – only when it is practiced or considered apart from love, in which case, anyway, it is not true penance.
Keep in mind what penance is not, and you’ll always be clear about what penance is. It’s not suffering for the sake of suffering. It’s not the gross imposition of a sadistic God or an authoritarian Church.
Penance, is rather, the willing removal of any obstacles to God’s love for us and to our love of God. It is an inchoate giving of our whole self, moment by moment, to God.
Our gift of self, unlike God’s, is gradual, given over a life-time. By nature and by God’s grace, each act of penance we offer, each sacramental confession, every little sacrifice conforms us ever more to God’s image, makes our lives more resemble the divine life. We accomplish this, partly, through the natural methods of self-mastery, but overwhelmingly through our correspondence to God’s grace.
Acts of self-denial have a medicinal effect on our concupiscence. They heal us by offsetting our many acts of self-indulgence. They serve as a remedy for the acts of self-indulgence by which we’ve sinned or weakened our will.
The small penance we receive in the confessional works the same way. However, it works more effectively than days of fasting, because it packs the additional power of Christ’s sacramental grace. Sacramental penance must not be our only act of penance, but it will always be our surest, because it is instituted by Christ for that purpose.
The sacrament of penance is an act of penance best practiced with an attitude of penance within the context of a life of penance.
Adapted from Lord Have Mercy, by Scott Hahn, Doubleday, 2003, Chapters 9 and 10