To understand the life of penance, one has to understand the history of the Jewish People and how they foreshadow the Church.
After the fall of man, God sets out to rescue man. To do so, he discloses himself to humanity through Israel. We see in his relationship with Israel what is really his relationship with all of us. Man sins, God recalls him back. Man atones, God forgives. As we can see from the OT, atonement is not a set of isolated acts (ie. Fasting, abstinence, beating the body, etc). Atonement is much greater than that. Atonement is a way of living in relationship with God and neighbor.
Israel sins, but he acknowledges his sins before God and before his neighbor. He asks for forgiveness. He sets out to correct what he has hurt. This happens over and over again. So we see Israel become a people of penance, constantly acknowledging its faults before God and man and constantly trying to atone. Through the centuries the Mitzvahs are revealed to Israel. They are the means through which man makes atonement. They involve the practice of charity toward all, an intense life of prayer (communal and individual, liturgical and private), sacrifice offered out of love (not out of guilt), detachment from those things that stand between God and man, and a holy indifference. Israel engages in working out its salvation by strengthening its relationship with God, not by trying to fix the pagans around them. Through their example, many pagans are brought into relationship with God.
Jesus fulfills Israel’s dream of reconciliation with God, through his own life of sacrifice, love, charity, devotion, prayer, service, detachment, simplicity, and sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice being the cross. The Church picks up the same theme of reconciliation with God and man. Through the masters of the Christian life she is able to systematize and put down on paper the methods of reconciliation, which would later become known as the Life of Penance to which we man has been called since the fall of Adam.
The life of penance can best be summed up through the conscious effort to live according to three sets of Mitzvahs:
The Commandments
The Beatitudes
The Corporal Works of Mercy
They are summed up in the Evangelical Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love and the three Evangelical Counsels of Obedience, Poverty and Chastity. The difference between the layman and the religious is not the call. All are called to live according to the three Mitzvahs that I’ve outlined above. They take their expression in the virtues and counsels. The difference is that the religious puts his or her soul on the line by vowing to get it right or forfeit his or her eternal salvation.
In order to live the Commandments, Beatitudes and practice the Corporal Works of mercy, one has to strip oneself of everything that gets in the way. One has to discipline oneself. This does not mean that we beat ourselves to a pulp with a discipline, that we fast until we starve, that we wear hair shirts and chains. Many people have done these things, because it helped them, not because it’s required. They are not always helpful. Sometimes, human beings are prideful. Our pride can lead us into the sin of excess. He want to be the best penitent. That is not helpful. Human beings can be hateful toward self and toward the body. That can lead to an abuse of self and body. That’s not helpful either. God does not invite us to hate anything that he created. Those persons who used these means and achieved holiness, achieved holiness because they used these means with great prudence and with the knowledge that they were neither the worse sinners or saints. The belief that one is the greatest sinner is often rooted in pride or in despair, two sides of the same coin to be avoided.
A life of penance has to be like that of Israel, which we see played out perfectly, without excess, in Jesus Christ. It is a life in which we constantly seek to atone for our sins through the perfection of charity. We take out of the way that which distracts us from our mission. That’s why the penitent is often materially poor. Material concerns can distract from charity toward God and neighbor. Without charity, there is no atonement. The penitent often disciplines the mind and body through corporal penances, such as fasting and abstinence. These are small sacrifices that he or she offers to God in atonement for sin. They help to keep him real. They help him to remember that he is sinful and God is merciful. He will often spend much time in prayer. Unless he cultivates the dialogue between the soul and God, the will never know the Will of God. Without that knowledge, how can he atone? Lectio Divina is the favorite form of private prayer of the penitent. The preferred public prayer of the penitent if the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours. He prays for the Church and with the Churchy. He offers sacrifice with the Church united to Christ at Calvary. Finally, the penitent engages in great acts of charity, especially toward the poor. The poor hold first place in the heart and mind of God. The great spiritual masters, from the Jewish Patriarchs to Bl. John Paul II, all understood that God made a preferential option for the poor by becoming incarnate among them. He is born poor. The Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Christ calls us to give what we have to the poor and to follow him. He dies stripped of everything and is buried in a borrowed tomb.
All of these things together are pieces of the Life of Penance. This way of life has one goal in mind, to atone for our sins by embracing the human condition of Christ. There is the why of it all.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
You have over 2,000 posts and still have not learned anything about the Catholic faith? I hope that the rest of the thread will help. God bless.
