SPLIT: Adequate Penance?

[Verbum_Caro]

We have to cooperate with God to repair the damage done by sin, even absolved sin, but everything we have to offer God belongs to God already. We are deluded if we think our relationship allows any quid pro quo. Therefore, whatever we do in order to make amends for sin was service owed to God in the first place, before we ever sinned! While a life of penance, almsgiving, prayer, and service are necessary in order to cooperate in God’s work of making us into saints, it is a gift to God made from the matter of His gifts to us. So while it is a necessary consequence that there must be cooperation from humankind in order to truly mend the effects of our sins, due to the nature of the damage sin does, it is not as if we are actually repaying God for our offenses.

I think that is point worth meditating on, especially in the sense that merit and satisfaction are only possible through Christ and His grace.

But, I wouldn’t want to take the point to far.

For instance, in the Summa Theologica we find the following objection (which seems to have some similarity):

if all that a man has suffices not to pay one debt, he cannot pay another debt. Now all that man is, all that he can do, and all that he has, does not suffice to pay what he owes for the blessing of creation, wherefore it is written (Isaiah 40:16) that “the wood of Libanus shall not be enough for a burnt offering.” Therefore by no means can he make satisfaction for the debt resulting from the offense committed.

And the answer:

This argument proves that it is impossible to make equivalent satisfaction to God, but not that it is impossible to make sufficient satisfaction to Him.For though man owes God all that he is able to give Him, yet it is not necessary for his salvation that he should actually do the whole of what he is able to do, for it is impossible for him, according to his present state of life, to put forth his whole power into any one single thing, since he has to be heedful about many things. And so his conduct is subject to a certain measure, viz. the fulfillment of God’s commandments, over and above which he can offer something by way of satisfaction.

In the main body of the question (*ST *Supp., q. 13, a. 1) St. Thomas says:

in giving honor to one’s parents or to the gods, as indeed the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 14), it is impossible to repay them measure for measure, but it suffices that man repay as much as he can, for friendship does not demand measure for measure, but what is possible. Yet even this is equal somewhat, viz. according to proportion, for as the debt due to God is, in comparison with God, so is what man can do, in comparison with himself, so that in another way the form of justice is preserved. It is the same as regards satisfaction. Consequently man cannot make satisfaction to God if “satis” [enough] denotes quantitative equality; but he can, if it denote proportionate equality, as explained above, and as this suffices for justice, so does it suffice for satisfaction.

So, although satisfaction can’t be made without God’s grace, nor is it anyway close to measure that is really owed, it can have a kind of proportionality to it. I think it might be possible to view the satisfaction we offer to God as a real repayment, just not an equivalent one, perhaps?

VC

 

[EasterJoy]

I think that is point worth meditating on, especially in the sense that merit and satisfaction are only possible through Christ and His grace.

But, I wouldn’t want to take the point to far.

For instance, in the Summa Theologica we find the following objection (which seems to have some similarity):

And the answer:

In the main body of the question (*ST *Supp., q. 13, a. 1) St. Thomas says:

So, although satisfaction can’t be made without God’s grace, nor is it anyway close to measure that is really owed, it can have a kind of proportionality to it. I think it might be possible to view the satisfaction we offer to God as a real repayment, just not an equivalent one, perhaps?

VC

Oh, yes, absolutely. I have always thought of it this way: Let us say that I am a child. Whether I purposefully drop an egg or crash my father’s car, I have no money and no way to repay the damage done, for I have neither a dime nor thousands of dollars to call my own. I am dependent on my father to cover my offenses, in any real sense, because I have nothing. In the case of God and me, I do not even have my work to call my own. All belongs to Him, both by justice and by my free consent.

Nevertheless, as a parent, my father would, as part of my formation to become like him, have to require me to make amends in some way for my misdeeds. I need to act in a way that repudiates my choice to offend in order to get back into my identity as being like him in any real sense. For that act of repudiation to form me as a person, the act must be proportional to the offense I am repenting of. Although in neither case am I picking up the tab, I would have to do far more to repudiate the choice to crash of the car than for the choice to drop an egg.

Let us say that after crashing the car, that my father deputised a brother to help me make amends. Let us say that the brother gave me something I thought was too little. I could respond, roughly, in three ways:

1. Say to myself, “Yippee! I got off easy!” I don’t think that would be so great, as it seems to lack the desire to express remorse.
2. Say to myself, “What? He thinks I’m a baby, that I can’t do more?” Also, not so great, as it is just an expression of pride.
3. Do what my brother asks, and then add on a little extra. This is humble to my father’s choice to have my brother give me my “penance”, but also expresses my desire to do something that seems to me to express my contrition more fully.

If a person gets a penance that seems too light, I think the way to go is to do that penance with a will, get the most out of it that we can, and then to add on something else out of a desire to express gratitude and to repudiate the sin even more fully. The addition of that extra penance, when solicited by gratitude and a desire to please God (rather than by a disguised pride) is always open to us.

In the case of both the child and the penitent, then, the penance does not repair the breach in terms of actually paying for damage done. It does repair the breach in terms of expressing and changing the offender’s attitude toward all offended by the sin, though, and expresses the offender’s attitude about repeating the sin. That is why there needs to be proportionality. It is the effort of heart that the penance expresses that needs to be proportional.