Harshest Penance?

[rosario120]

Not anything hard here. Except when I returned to the Church and had to pray the Rosary. I thought that meant all three sets of mysterious. That was befor the Luninous ones.

A reminder. You can ask another priest to change a pennace you got from a differnt priest.

 

[maria2334]

My longest penance is to say a decade of the rosary… for the rest of my life. This was from a visiting priest. I had only confessed venial sins, and it had only been 3 days since my last confession. (This was at a penance service.)

I have had to read Psalm 51 and the parable of the prodigal son before, both from the same priest. I think that reading Psalm 51 was the best penance I had ever had, but for other circumstances than just its beautiful and repentant words.

From my usual confessor, I normally am required to pray for the people who could be hurt by my sins. Like, if I confess speeding, I pray for people hurt and killed in car accidents. Or, if it’s being mean or disobedient to mom, I pray for familys who have trouble getting along. I really like my priest’s penances… they always fit so perfectly. And I can tell when he thinks I really messed up, because then I get the full rosary (20 decades) or something.

 

[MaryChelan]

cassman:

What is the harshest penance you have ever received?

If it will give away your sin, then obviously don’t say.
My mom was told to read all of Numbers once.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a harsh penance, per se, but I’ve had a challenging one. This was my most recent penance, just this Saturday. I was recently terminated from my job by a man who claims to be a born-again Christian, who terminated me for something that had absolutely nothing to do with my job, so I’ve had quite a resentment toward him. I’ve not felt charitable toward him whatsoever, and so this I confessed. My penance was to say a Rosary for him. It is never difficult for me to pray the Rosary, but it was somewhat difficult to pray it for this man, though I did do it. And it was a very good penance for me, under the circumstances. It was very healing for me, and it dissipated my anger toward this man. I think my priest is really on to something!! I get so much out of Confession. It is hard for me to even imagine a harsh penance, because I don’t think I’ve ever had one. All the penances I’ve received have helped me immensely spiritually. God bless!

 

[Minerva]

the harshest penance I’ve ever gotten was to genuinely try to forgive a person who I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive, being that he’s certainly not sorry for what he did to me, and the emotional abuse I suffered at his hands 4 years ago has resulted in PTSD for me to this day I just want to forget about him - forgiving him is about the most impossible thing right now.

 

[Keath_Wade]

The harshest was being assigned a passage of scripture to memorize, and then to recite the passage to someone. That took awhile to complete.

We had a priest at our parish for some time who could not understand or speak English very well. When I went to confesion with him, I understood very little of what he said to me, and I think he understood even less of what I said to him. During the middle of confession, not a penance, and seemingly unrelated to anything else being said, he asked me if I had a statue of the Sacred Heart in my house. I said no. He said he thought I should have a statue of the Sacred Heart in my house. I went and got one as soon as I could!

Keath Wade