Stiffest Penance?

[turtle18]

I had a priest give me two penances once. I confessed two sins and he said “okay your penance is to go out in church and finish saying the rosary with the rest of the congregation.” (The congregation was reciting the rosary out loud.) I had already said the rosary that day and I was thinking that in my head but I didn’t want to argue with the priest.

But I did argue with him, not because of the penance but because I wasn’t done with my confession. So I confessed three more sins and then he gave me a second penance where I had to take a five minute prayer break at work (like the smokers take their smoke break except mine was used for prayer.)

 

[LuxDei]

I’ve confessed some awful things, because I’m a convert and had the pleasure of going through my entire adolescence, which was spent in all kinds of sin, to the priest. That time though I think he asked me to read the story of the woman who bathed Jesus’ feet with ointment and her hair begging for forgiveness (she was a prostitute I think) and “let it speak to me.” That wasn’t very hard, and was very appropriate. Sometimes I think the priests go easy on me with penances because if I have a mortal sin to confess it’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to do so without at least tearing/choking up, which they pick up on and then infer that I’m already very contrite and what not. I read somewhere that someone said “The tears of repentant sinners are like wine for the angels.” That makes me happy, because I cry a LOT when I repent! Haha.

But the **hardest **one, strangely enough, was on Mother’s Day weekend. I had only confessed venial sins, but the priest assigned me a whole rosary as penance (or 5 decades, I mean)! I think since it was Mother’s Day, he was assigning everyone a rosary to honor Mary or something haha.

 

[CarrieH]

Has anyone ever been asked to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet as penance?

Yes, twice. I asked the priest if he meant the whole thing and not just one decade, and he did. It’s no big deal, it only takes a few minutes.

We had one priest whom I called “Father Three-fer.” No matter what I confessed, he always gave me three Our Fathers, unless there was a Marian feast day coming up, in which case it was three “Hail Mary’s.” Interestingly, he was reassigned…**three **parishes to the north of ours!

 

[Cavaille-Coll]

The stiffest penance I received was one rosary, but that priest never gave less than one decade to anyone. The strangest one was at a youth conference on the coast, where a priest assigned me to go out and listen to the ocean. The most creative penance I’ve received was: “before you go to bed tonight, bend down and kiss the floor three times as a sign of humility before God.” I’ve never forgotten that one!

 

[Joannm]

I never get more than an our father OR 3 hail marys. I confessed not doing enough to convince my husband not to get a vasectomy, was told that under the circumstances there was no sin in his having done so and to just say ONE Our Father. What does one have to do to get a stiff penance? Or even an original one.

I once confessed a biggie and the priest only gave me an Our Father. When I questioned him on that, why he didn’t give me sometinng harder, he said that I did enough penance in preparing to come in and confess this particular sin (he knew how long it took me to get up the courage and how much I prayed about it before coming to see him). He said the Our Father was in thanksgiving for God’s mercy. Then he added that if I really wanted to I could go to sleep on a bed of nails that night.