Where do we find penance in the bible?

[JDGaney]

When the priest assigns us our penance, where is that in the bible?

 

[R_C]

When the priest assigns us our penance, where is that in the bible?

To begin with: not everything is in the Bible, otherwise it would be a very, very lengthy book that very few would be able to read in a lifetime.

From a Spanish RCIA book by Fr. Ricardo Sada Fernandez:
"The final act of the sacramental sign is the satisfaction or penance. It is not a price paid for the forgiveness received, for nothing can pay what is the fruit of the Blood of Christ. It is a sign of the compromise that a man takes on beginning a new life, fighting with physical and spiritual mortification the wounds that sin has left on the faculties of the soul.

Now, absolution forgives the sin, the eternal punishment (hell), and some of the temporal punishment, according to the disposition of the penitent. However, since it is very difficult that the disposition is so perfect as to suppress all temporal punishment, the confessor imposes a penance that helps attenuate this punishment."

From the Catholic Encyclopedia (link):

In theological language, this penance is called satisfaction and is defined, in the words of St. Thomas: “The payment of the temporal punishment due on account of the offence committed against God by sin” (Summa Theologicæ Supplement.12.3). It is an act of justice whereby the injury done to the honour of God is required, so far at least as the sinner is able to make reparation (poena vindicativa); it is also a preventive remedy, inasmuch as it is meant to hinder the further commission of sin (poena medicinalis). Satisfaction is not, like contrition and confession, an essential part of the sacrament, because the primary effect, i.e., remission of guilt and eternal punishment — is obtained without satisfaction; but it is an integral part, because it is requisite for obtaining the secondary effect — i.e., remission of the temporal punishment.

“Of all the parts of penance”, says the Council of Trent (loc. cit.), “satisfaction was constantly recommended to the Christian people by our Fathers”. This the Reformers themselves admitted. Calvin (Instit., III, iv, 38) says he makes little account of what the ancient writings contain in regard to satisfaction because “nearly all whose books are extant went astray on this point or spoke too severely”. Chemnitius (“Examen C. Trident.”, 4) acknowledges that Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine extolled the value of penitential works; and Flacius Illyricus, in the “Centuries”, has a long list of Fathers and early writers who, as he admits, bear witness to the doctrine of satisfaction. Some of the texts already cited (Confession) expressly mention satisfaction as a part of sacramental penance. To these may be added St. Augustine …]

St. Ambrose: “So efficacious is the medicine of penance that [in view of it] God seems to revoke His sentence” (On Penance II.6.48);

Among the motives for doing penance on which the Fathers most frequently insist is this: If you punish your own sin, God will spare you; but in any case the sin will not go unpunished. Or again they declare that God wants us to perform satisfaction in order that we may clear off our indebtedness to His justice. It is therefore with good reason that the earlier councils — e.g., Laodicaea (A.D. 372) and Carthage IV (397) — teach that satisfaction is to be imposed on penitents; and the Council of Trent but reiterates the traditional belief and practice when it makes the giving of “penance” obligatory on the confessor.

I hope this was of some help

 

[JerryZ]

When the priest assigns us our penance, where is that in the bible?

The basis was laid out in Exodus when GOD set up the Levys as priests that would offer sacrifices as atonement for the transgressions yet those could not forgive sin.

The forgiveness of sin can only be achieved through the perfect sacrifice one that we cannot offer only Jesus could.

Hope this help.

 

[Church_Militant]

This might help some. Scriptures About Penance