Last week, I mentioned the seminar I taught this past semester about the sacrament of marriage. I also taught a course about the sacrament of penance. (I learned to be careful when describing my course load to make clear that those were, in fact, two different courses and not a sly commentary on marriage!)
The sacrament of penance has a fascinating history, and the way in which it has been practiced over the centuries has varied more than perhaps any other sacrament. A major theme of the class, however, was that the sacrament itself is not the only way that Christians practice penance. As Thomas Aquinas pointed out (in the Summa Theologiae III q. 85), penance is not only a sacrament but also a virtue. He didn’t come up with that particular insight himself, of course, but was summarizing the theological tradition before him.
In short, being contrite means recognizing one’s sins as wrong, feeling sorry for having committed them, and desiring not to do so again. This means not only making a judgment with one’s mind, but also feeling both regret for the past and hopeful resolve about the future. But thoughts and feelings aren’t enough. Virtues need to be put into action. And so the virtue of penance involves taking concrete actions in order to start putting our desire for conversion into action.
Going to confession is certainly one way of doing this–of exercising the virtue of penance–but it’s not the only way. Studying history, in fact, one realizes just how diverse Christian penance has been over the years (my favorite form of penance is going on a pilgrimage!). Unfortunately, I think we don’t much think about penance as a virtue anymore. I suspect that revivifying the practice of the sacrament of penance–which underwent a pretty steep decline after Vatican II–depends a lot on rediscovering the virtue of penance.
All of this will be very familiar to students of my course, and if they’re reading now they might think that I sound like a broken record, so you can imagine how delighted I was on my first weekend after the end of classes when perusing the internet I came upon a reflection on this week’s Sunday readings by my friend and Notre Dame classmate Maria Morrow about… the virtue of penance!
Of course, it wasn’t entirely a surprise to see Maria’s reflection since she is a theologian who teaches at Seton Hall, and has published articles on the virtue of penance before. She even wrote a book about confession: Sin in the Sixties: Catholics and Confession 1955-1975 (from Catholic University of America Press). Her more recent book is practical and adds her experience as a mom to her experience as theologian: A Busy Parent’s Guide to a Meaningful Lent (from Our Sunday Visitor Press).
As she points out in her reflection, Lent starts early this year (Happy Valentine’s Day!), so it’s not too early to start thinking about the virtue of penance.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 