Conference given by Fr. Brendan Arthur to the Apostolate of Prayer for Priests

March 6, 2003

Entering the season of Lent, I thought it apt to say a few words about penance. Penance is for sin. If there were no sin, there would be no need of penance. Wherever sin is found, penance must also be found if the sin is to be blotted out. Our Lord in His mercy instituted the sacraments of baptism and penance to remove sin from the soul. Baptism removes original sin and any other sins committed; penance, all sins committed after baptism. As marvellous as these sacraments are, the do not take away the evil roots of sin, always lying in wait to spring forth its evil fruits.

If we want to make the work of the sacrament of penance to be lasting; if we want to remain in the state of grace, then we must also practice the virtue of penance. Like all the virtues, the virtue of penance is a habit, but what is proper to this virtue is its inclining us to expiate our sins and to destroy whatever remains of them. There are acts of the virtue of penance, but penance consists firstly in an habitual attitude of the soul: an abiding sorrow at having offended God.

Sin is fundamentally an injustice perpetrated against Almighty God, since by sin, we deny God’s right to our obedience. Whenever we see justice personified, we see her holding a set of scales; the balance of justice must always be restored after an injustice. By the virtue of penance, man dishes out his own retribution, avenging the rights of God which he disregarded. By sin, man has turned away from God; by penance he returns to Him. After seeing what evils sin has brought about – especially the death or the Redeemer – being moved with sorrow, the penitent soul would rather die than deliberately violate the rights of God. Here we have the spirit of penance, which then urges us on to perform the acts of expiation.

Christianity is one great paradox. We die that we may live. This is the essential mystery of Christianity: life through death. The death is not an end in itself – something we should remember – but is merely a condition for the obtaining of life. What does this mean exactly, "we must die that we may live"? God made man with moral rectitude: the passions were subject to the will and the will to the intellect. Only after the sin of man was this order set in disarray. The lower nature of all the appetites in us have taken, as it were, control of our whole beings. Even St. Paul had to cry out: "Unhappy man that I am… the good which I will I do not, but the evil which I will not, that I do." This disorder in ourselves, far from returning to the former order with time, rather grows stronger day by day, so long as no efforts are made to bring it under subjection. If we are to maintain the life of grace, then there is no other way than to mortify – a word which means to "make dead" – ourselves. We must put to death not our nature itself (which is good as such), but all that in our nature is the source of disorder and sin. The passions out of control; the wandering thoughts; the evil inclinations. This is the reason for penance. By no means is it done for its own sake, but for the sake of re-establishing order within ourselves and justice between ourselves and God.

This struggle will exist as long as there is life in the body. And as long as there is life in the body, there must be a continual dying to oneself… mortification and self-renunciation. After our baptism, it’s easy to see that mortification is the logical consequence. Baptism is a death to sin and a beginning to live for God. The renunciation of sin is the first condition to being a Christian. But how are we to apply this principle of renunciation?

Every soul is different, and so the way penance and mortification are carried out must differ for each of us. In a soul where sin has taken deep root, the necessity of penance is graver than in a soul which has advanced in the spiritual life. In the first instance, there is a greater disorder, and therefore more of a tendency to sin. In the second instance, sin either has never taken root in the soul, or the roots have already been cut out. In spite of this, there are certain obligations that every Christian must fulfil: the observance of the commandments; the observance of the Church’s fasts and abstinences; fidelity to duty; avoidance of the occasions of sin. All these things often imply renunciation and mortification. Then there are the particular faults of each one, which again differ from soul to soul. God requires that we do our best in overcoming these imperfections by constant vigilance and examination of conscience. This is the way we lay the axe to the root of the vices in question. Then there are the trials that Providence sets for us. The patient endurance of these can cause a lot of pain, yet it’s true that these are the best mortifications, because they aren’t chosen by ourselves, but we must submit to them anyway; whether we like it or not – something which can be somewhat damaging to our pride. Sickness, death of a loved one, failure, adversities, frustration of plans, weakness and sadness. It was by taking all these in his stride, as mortification, that St Paul could say "I die daily." WHY! Only the better to live the life of Christ!

Speaking of his sufferings, St Paul says "I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church". Was there anything lacking in redeeming work of our Lord? Of course not! How are we to understand this, when we know that the satisfaction that our Lord made was infinite? What can be added to our Lord’s satisfaction? The Church is a mystical body, and if the members are to be conformed to the head, if they are to be worthy of the Head, they too must suffer.

Remember our Lord as He carries His cross. Wishing to feel the full weight of the cross and the torments inflicted upon Him, He bears the full brunt of our sins. He suffers so much that the Jews are afraid He will die They enlist the help of Simon of Cyrene, and our Lord accepts his help. By doing this, Simon stands for all of us. By our joining our Lord on the way to Calvary, we prove our discipleship: "He who wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." I remember talking to a friend once upon the great penances some of the saints have performed, expecting to see the same admiration in my companion. "I just can’t understand that!" was what I heard to my naïve surprise. "Why would anybody want to do that? It’s sick!" Why? This is why; this is the secret of the saints. They not only wanted to expiate their own sins, but went the extra mile and become more like our Lord by their suffering for others.

This is a tough doctrine for our nature to subscribe to! Left to its own devices, poor nature can’t handle even the thought of suffering! We don’t have to do it alone, though. Our Lord has gone before us, and has suffered infinitely more than any of us could. By His sufferings, also, our Lord has sanctified our own. He has merited for us the strength to bear our crosses and merited that our sufferings – if offered up in union with our Lord – be pleasing to His Father.

Only when we are convinced of all this, can we be consoled in our sufferings. Of course we suffer; we are sad and pained. After all, the servant is not above the Master. But under it all is the consolation of knowing that our sufferings make us more like our Lord and more pleasing to the Father. And through it all, our Lord consoles us Himself: "Come to Me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you". St Paul, in spite of all his sufferings: his floggings, his shipwrecks, his beatings, his being stoned, the betrayals form friends, his suffering from the cold, his hunger… in spite of it all, he didn’t hesitate to cry out: "I exceedingly abound in joy in all our tribulation". Nor will any of these trials shake him in his love and trust: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? As it is written: for Thy sake we are put to death all the day long".

These are the sentiments we must strive to have during Lent. All our acts of penance united under the virtue of penance, with the habitual intention of dying to sin so as to live with our Lord.