Thoughts about Penance
- Deacon Edward Schaefer
- Jul 15, 2018
- 8 min read
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I have said before (here) that to live a Catholic life is to share in the very life of Jesus. To live a Catholic life also means to live in a world that the secular realm would call a world of paradoxes, but that the realm of faith calls a world of mystery.
Examples abound: we believe in a God Who is infinitely just and at the same time infinitely merciful. We believe in a God Who is victorious in death. We have a faith that tells us that even when we have nothing, we have everything. We can rejoice even in our deepest trials – because the testing of our faith produces steadfastness. (James 1:2-3) It brings us closer to God. We die, but we we shall live forever. We turn our cheek to those who would strike us, yet we shed our blood to defend the truth. We believe we are called to give all our earthy possessions away to the poor and follow Christ, and at the same time – as Mary Magdalene did with the precious oil she poured on the feet of Jesus – we are called to give lavish praise to the glory of God in rich ceremony, beautiful music, art and architecture, all at great expense. We are criticized by some for our doctrine of Hell because they say it breeds despair, and at the same time we are chastised by others for our doctrine of Heaven because they say it offers false hope.
Chesterton once mused about paradoxes saying, “Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation… would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be [just] the right shape.” (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Moody Publishers: Chicago, 2009, 136.)
Paradox, or as I would rather say, mystery, is not what is wrong with Catholicism. It is exactly what is right with Catholicism for it is precisely the paradoxical/mysterious shape of our doctrines that allows us to offer answers to deep theological, philosophical, and moral problems.
For example, the theological paradox of Original Sin illumines the answer to the moral dilemma of balancing pride with humility. Original Sin, as we know, is the doctrine stating that our nature has been corrupted as a result of our willful disobedience to God. We read of this disobedience in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man. In describing Original Sin, Chesterton writes, “The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. This is the inmost philosophy of the Fall…. That whatever I am, I am not myself.” [That is, I am destined for something more, something far greater. My “normal” self is a fall self!] So, instead of establishing a kind of compromise virtue of modesty that somehow splits the gap between pride and humility, this doctrine of normal abnormality enables us to experience simultaneously [a taste of that far greater something:] the glory of the highest pride and the awe of the meekest humility. (Chris Hauser, “Faith and Paradox: G.K. Chesterton’s Philosophy of Christian Paradox,” in The Dartmouth Apologia, Vol. 6:1 (Fall 2011). Accessed at http://augustinecollective.org/faith-and-paradox-g-k-chestertons-philosophy-of-christian-paradox/.
I want to explore here one of these many paradoxes and to share with you some personal reflections about how I have come to deal with it in my own life. That is the paradox between the glory of God and the suffering of God.
God, that is Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, died once and for all, and in so doing, He was restored to the glory that was His before the world began. He sits at the right hand of the Father in majesty. He is all-glorious.
At the same time, He is omni-present in His suffering. We experience this at every Mass when the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present on the altar. Saul (that is, St. Paul) experienced this when God, in all His glory, struck Saul off his horse and said, “Saul, Saul, Why dost thou persecute Me?” And we sense this every time we sin.
So, the infinite glory of God and the incredible suffering of God are not something that occurred in a kind of chronological sequence bound in time. They occur, in mystery, simultaneously and all the time. (To use a technical term, they are kind of “mushed up” altogether.) And it is not as if the glory of God is good and the suffering of God is bad. They are both intimately, equally, and simultaneously part of the infinite goodness and love of God.
Even so, my own sense is that when our faith is particularly strong, (by that I mean both the faith of each of us personally and the faith of the Church institutionally) the glory of God shines particularly bright. For example, the flourishing of the Church in the great renewal following the Council of Trent. Seminaries were founded for the proper training of priests, a new catechism was developed and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine was established for the teaching of the youth. Abuses in the Church were cleansed. Hospitals and foundations were built to serve the sick and the poor. New religious orders were founded, the most famous of which was the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. God lifted up great saints, such as St. Theresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul and others. (http://uploads.weconnect.com/mce/f90a34bcd66e597a5d391005bf1e14a7c70f1d2c/FatherTobinsWritings/PART%2010%20THE%20CATHOLIC%20REFORMATION%20JUNE%202013%20tbp.pdf)
Another time when, it seems to me, the glory of God shined particularly bright through a fervent and faithful Church was during the 19th century and early 20th centuries here in the United States. Priests and religious, particularly many orders of sisters, spread the faith across this country, establishing parishes, hospitals, and arguably the greatest school system the world has ever seen.
However, as the glory of God and the suffering of God co-exist intimately, equally, and simultaneously, so, too, even in these times when the Church flourishes, the seeds of her demise are sown through sin and evil. In the nineteenth century, for example, we see the growth of the philosophies of liberalism and modernism, which, in spite of the heroic efforts of great saints like Pope Pius X, have slowly and steadily overtaken our society and, in some ways, even invaded the Church.
Such that, today we are in a period when the suffering Christ seems – at least on the surface – more evident than His Glory. The schools, the parishes, the hospitals are gone or closing. The modernist view that all truth is personal and relative has overwhelmed our society, and it is almost as if we learn of some new corruption in the Church every day. The words of God to Saul are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago, “Why, O why dost thou persecute me?”
Yet, even in this dark time there are the seeds of our rebirth. For one example, the Catholic Church is the one Christian denomination that steadfastly and without exception continues to teach the sacredness of life as a gift from God – from our openness to life in the marriage covenant, to the protection of the unborn, to the care for life to its natural end. Our steadfastness in the doctrine of life will be a source of our own rebirth as a Church.
With all of this as a backdrop, let me share a few personal thoughts about how I have come to grapple with this mystery of God’s glory and God’s suffering in my own life.
If I share in the very life of Christ, then I share in His glory and I share in His suffering. Through the infinite merits of the Cross, I share especially in His glory through my prayers and good works. And at the same time, I share in His suffering, especially when I endure the sickness, corruption, and evil and exists in the world due to sin. Indeed, I don’t just share in God’s suffering, I contribute to it. In a very real way, my personal sins contribute to all the evil that exists in the world, and in particular, the corruption that exists in my own Church. I may not be personally responsible for it, but any time I sin, I contribute to the existence of evil.
So, I ask myself, “How, in my own life, can I change this?” How can I become part of the solution, part of the rebirth of the Church, if you will, rather than a contributor to her demise? My first impulse was to take on some particular form of penance, something the merits of which I might offer up for the rebirth of the Church. I even considered asking my pastor to suggest some penance or sacrifice for me to make, but I hesitated because, frankly, I was afraid he might give me some severe penance that I couldn’t handle.
Then I realized that not every penance has to be severe. I must be tempted 100 times a day to complain or to criticize. Here’s a little example: this is how my Sunday morning could go very easily:
I get up at 5:00am, and I grumble because it is so dark and I can’t see a thing. Then my grumpy mood gets worse when I find the newspaper lying in a puddle of water, and the plastic bag that is supposed to keep it dry has actually become a reservoir.
I get ready to come to Ocala, get in the car, and the first thing that happens is that I hit 15 traffic lights on highway 441 going through Gainesville. At every one of the those lights I contemplate the stupidity of the city engineer who cannot figure out how to synchronize the traffic lights – for me. I cross Paynes Prairie and consider the equal absurdity of a department of transportation that has built a road that has to close two lanes when it rains a lot. This is Florida. It rains a lot all the time! And by the way, the lane they do leave open, needs a lot of repair. Of course, there are unsafe drivers who cause the accidents that I pass about 50% of the time, not to mention the inconsiderate person who cuts me off in the church parking lot, and just to top it off, there’s old “what’s-his-name” who doesn’t bother to say hello to me as I come into the church. (He couldn’t possibly be thinking about anything more important than greeting me!)
All this, and it’s not even 7:00AM. I have barely gotten into the church. As I think about this, I realize that I can be really good at this. In fact, it just might be my most highly developed skill.
So, perhaps my penance does not need to be something heroic. Just perhaps there is plenty of opportunity for me to do penance in the many small things that cross my path – or perhaps I should say the many small things that make me cross – every day.
Often when I sit in the church I sit near the statue of St. Therese Lisieux. I realize, now, why. It is so I can be reminded of her words: “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
Now, to be honest, I write this partly for my own consolation. I would like to believe that everyone is just like me in all these temptations. I don’t really want to imagine the possibility that it’s just me. (So, if it is, please don’t write and tell me so!)
On the other hand, if, by some mystery, you might have even a few similar temptations, perhaps these thoughts may of some benefit to you, too. If each of us, could take every single opportunity of using the small things in our life as a means of sacrifice, then just perhaps we, who exist for the praise of God’s glory, (Eph 1:11) might sow the seeds from which the glory of God will shine once again more brightly.
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