Encounter With Mercy

Announcing: Encounter With Mercy – A Step-by-Step Guide to the Sacrament of Reconciliation

I am happy to announce the first official publication of Catholic Spiritual Direction!

The forward is written by Cardinal Justin Rigali. This step-by-step guide is compact (back pocket or purse size), simple to read, and perfect for rediscovering or deepening our understanding and practice of one of the greatest gifts we have as Catholics. Read inspiring stories, learn the reasons confession is important, understand the Bible’s answers to common objections, and find out how you can promote confession to those around you. Buy one for yourself and several to give away!

 To purchase, click HERE and please tell your friends about this important guide!

Here’s A Summary of this Fantastic Resource:

• Forward by Cardinal Justin Rigali
• Introduction: The Crisis of Love
• Seeker’s Stories
• 10 Reasons to Go to Confession
• 10 Things You Can Expect From Confession
• 7 Things Expected From You in Confession
• 7 Objections and the Bible’s Answers
• Catholicism 101
• 7 Ways to Examin Your Conscience
• 6-Step How-to-Guide to Confession
• 7 Ways to Promote Confession
• Resources

Penance and Mortification – What is the difference?

Q: Dear Father John, OK, now I have a better grasp of what we mean by “mortification,” but that has raised another question. Is there difference between mortification and penance or penitence.

A: This is a very interesting question. The distinction between mortification (synonymous in most spiritual writers with self-denial, abnegation, self-renunciation, dying to self) and penance (synonymous with penitence, sacrifice or self-sacrifice, and “reparation”) has to do with the interior motive behind the action. In other words, the exterior action (fasting, for example, or taking a cold shower on a cold morning) can be exactly the same, but depending on the reason why I am doing the action (my intention), the spiritual nature of the act can be either mortification or penance.

The intentionality of an act of mortification is to “punish [i.e., discipline] my body [i.e., self-seeking tendencies] and bring it under control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as herald for others, I myself may be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). In other words, I freely deny the satisfaction of a normal and healthy desire in order to grow in my spiritual maturity, to learn to govern the self-seeking tendencies built into my fallen nature. For example, I purposefully mortify my perfectly legitimate desire for dessert on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent, so that I am better able to control an illegitimate desire to get drunk whenever that desire happens to surface. Mortification is spiritual training, tempering of the willpower in order to be able to better govern our passions and instincts, starving the bad plants in the garden (vices and selfish tendencies) so the good plants (virtues) can flourish.

The intentionality of an act of penance is to “make up in my own body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). I am doing penance for sin, making up for an evil, destructive deed, just as Christ did by dying on the cross. He offered his obedience as “payment” (or atonement) for our disobedience. This is how he repaired (made “reparation” for) the breach between God and man created by original sin. He sacrificed himself (made himself into an offering to God) on our behalf. Penance, therefore, is done as a way to tell God we are sorry for our sins, or for the sins of others, and to make up for them. Thus, my teenage son refused to go to Mass on Sunday, and so, to make up for this ungrateful offense against the majesty and goodness of God, I do penance on his behalf – perhaps making a Holy Hour on Monday evening instead of watching a favorite television show, or not listening to music during my morning commute this week, just to show God that someone (I) does indeed love the Giver more than the gifts. A good dad would do something similar if his son broke a neighbor’s window by throwing a rock; he would make up for it himself, if his son refused to do so. When we do penance, we are repairing for sin, reversing the self-indulgent act of sin by replacing it with a self-giving act of mortification.

Two other points remain on this issue. First, the only way that mortification and penance really help advance Christ’s Kingdom is if we are united to Christ. We must be living the life of grace – Christ must be alive in us – in order for us to unite our actions to his, so that they share in his merits. It’s like having a bank account with co-signers. The check only draws from the vault of merit if it is signed both by me (junior partner) and by Christ (senior partner). We cannot save ourselves by ourselves; we cannot grow in holiness apart from the source of holiness: “for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Second, the concept of sacrifice also includes an element of intercession and petition. Offering God a sacrifice can be a way of intensifying a prayer of intercession. Thus, when St. Therese of the Child Jesus was interceding for the conversion of a criminal condemned to death, she and her sisters joined sacrifices (acts of self-denial) to their prayers. In the same way, we can offer sacrifices (acts of self-denial, obedience, patience…) to God in order to benefit other members of the Body of Christ who may be in need – those in temptation or sorrow, those in prison or suffering persecution. We are connected to them through our membership in Christ. It’s like a tug of war. We are all on the same team, pulling in the same direction. But sometimes someone on our team stumbles, loses their balance, or stops pulling as hard as they can. In those moments, we can pull harder, making up for their momentary lack, picking up the slack, so that they can have a quick breather and then get back into action.

We can draw a whole host of conclusions from these observations, but I will finish by pointing out just one. Since the distinction between mortification and penance is in the spiritual intention, not the physical action, the same physical action can serve simultaneously as both an act of mortification and of penance. We can do one action with multiple intentions. So don’t worry too much about whether your Lenten sacrifice is for mortification or for penance – make it for both!

Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC, ThD

Penance after Reconciliation……implications of not fulfilling it!

Q: Dear Father Edward, a couple of months ago, I went to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. After I confessed my sins the priest asked me whether I could say the Angelus for my penance. He also asked me if I knew the Angelus. I very hesitatingly affirmed, thinking that if I concentrated enough (I had not said the Angelus in a long time), the words would come. However, on returning to the pew and put myself to the test, I could recollect most (not all) words, but the flow of the prayer was not there. Try as much as I could, I could not recite the entire Angelus. As such I “completed” the penance and then went on to receive Communion. I also said to myself that I would source the Angelus prayer form the Internet and say it the next day. This “next day” has only occurred today. Already I have availed of the sacrament of reconciliation a couple of times as well as received Communion every time I heard Mass. Not really knowing the implications/effects of this act, I did not even mention this at the subsequent confessions. But this keeps nagging at the back of my head. Please help me understand the role of penance, if it is a must and if it is to be “complied” with to the fullest.

A: It is good to hear that you are trying to avail yourself of the sacrament of reconciliation on a regular basis. The glossary of the Catechism describes the sacrament as “The liturgical celebration of God’s forgiveness of the sins of the penitent, who is thus reconciled with God and with the Church.” It remits and forgives those sins committed after baptism. The sacrament of reconciliation (also known simply as confession or the sacrament of penance) is one of the most comforting treasures that the Almighty has given to the Church. Countless souls over the centuries have approached the sacrament with heavy hearts ? and then came away with a renewed outlook on life. Years, even decades, of sin can be absolved in one good confession. The essential elements of the sacrament comprise the acts of the penitent along with the prayer of absolution by the priest. The acts of the penitent are: contrition, the confession of sins, and accepting the penance imposed in satisfaction or reparation. (The temporal punishment that lingers for sins can be remitted through indulgences as well as prayer and acts of charity.)

Now let’s turn to your specific situation. Your first confession was certainly valid, provided that you had the proper contrition, that is, the proper sorrow for your sins. Contrition can be imperfect, meaning that it is motivated more by a fear of punishment. Then there is perfect contrition, which is motivated by sorrow for having offended God; this suffices before the sacrament when one has the intention to go to confession. Let’s assume, too, that you confessed any and all mortal sins that you were aware of, including sins previously unconfessed (for instance, if you didn’t realize that they were mortal sins at the time you committed them). It is also “recommended to the Christian faithful that they also confess venial sins” (Canon law No. 988.2). Let’s further assume that you had the intention to fulfill the penance. You did the best you could at the moment, and eventually did find the text of the Angelus and prayed it. In the meantime ? and assuming that you remained in a state of grace ? you could receive Communion and even return to the sacrament of confession before having completed the first penance perfectly. In other words, your first and subsequent confessions were valid (if you fulfilled all other requirements) and your communions were OK too. So you can breathe easier.

The ideal, of course, would have been for you to pray the Angelus well the first time. If you knew the bulk of the Angelus by memory and prayed it, that would have fulfilled the obligation. If you had a reasonable doubt, you would have done well to get a copy of the Angelus as soon as possible. It would have helpful, but not necessary, to mention your tardiness in a subsequent confession; this might have prompted you to fulfill the penance sooner. This in turn helps us not to take the sacrament for granted.

A few other points are worth noting. An unfulfilled penance is a sin but does not invalidate the confession. If, after accepting a penance, the penitent finds it to be burdensome or very difficult to fulfill, he can ask the same or another confessor to change the penance. The Catechism in No. 1460 says that a penance “must correspond as far as possible with the gravity and nature of the sins committed. It can consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear. Such penances help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all.” Fulfilling the penance, by the way, doesn’t take away all the temporal punishment linked to our sins ? even one sin against an infinitely good God is beyond our ability to make up for it fully on our own ? but it does help to ensure the full benefits of the sacrament.

God bestows his mercy generously, but penitents need to have the right disposition. Tragic it is that relatively few Catholics avail themselves of this rich sacrament.

Yours in Christ, Father Edward McIlmail, LC

Father McIlmail is a theology instructor at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, RI.

More indulgence clarification…

Q: Dear Father John, As I read your excellent posts on indulgences. A question occurred to me. If a person were to perform these suggested spiritual exercises without asking for the indulgence, would he still obtain the indulgence? Also since no longer are there no longer specified “time outs” applied to the purgatory… how do we arrive at how many indulgences are enough to avoid as much “time” in purgatory to begin with? Isn’t this kind of thinking sort of like the idea of God having a check list of who is naughty/nice? and how much purgatorial time is required for a particular kind of sin? I don’t mean to sound flippant but it sounds like a massive book-keeping system would be required to keep the “accounts” straight! But then God, being God, would have it all figured out I guess. As you can no doubt tell this is an area of “difficulty” for me. Thank you!

A: Actually, this is an area of difficulty for many people.  In fact, the issue of indulgences was one of the sparks that started the tragic blaze of the Protestant Reformation, a blaze that incinerated the cultural and religious unity of Christendom starting back in the 1500s.  I don’t know if I will be able to completely resolve the difficulty, but I will try to share some thoughts that may help.

Indulgences vs. Benefits

Your first question is easier than your second.  An indulgence can only be attained with the intention of attaining it.  So, if I were to lift my mind to God in the midst of my work day, I would not receive an indulgence for doing that unless I were consciously intending to receive it.  But we need to be very clear about something here.  Indulgences are not the only spiritual benefits out there.  Any time we engage in these spiritual exercises (reading Sacred Scripture, praying the Stations of the Cross, saying specific prayers…), we give glory to God and bring ourselves and our world into contact with the rushing stream of redeeming grace flowing from Christ’s cross.  Even if I am not intending to receive an indulgence, therefore, these spiritual practices are worthwhile, and God will reward them and utilize them to build up his Kingdom.  Through prayer and sacrifice, we become channels of God’s grace.  An indulgence is simply a specific manifestation of that grace, one that the Church offers to us as a concrete way show our love for the Lord and for our neighbor.  That’s why you should feel no obligation to go indulgence hunting.  If this practice doesn’t resonate in your heart, don’t worry about it!  Continue to pray and seek the face of Christ in all you do, and let God worry about the rest.

A Touch of History

Your second question is a bit thornier.  We have to do a small history lesson to get to the bottom of it.  In the first centuries of the Church, confession and penance were much more public than they are now.  Only in the 500s did the Irish monks really begin to popularize individual, private confession.  Until that era, it was more common for Christians who had fallen into grave sin to make their confession in front of the bishop and the entire congregation, and to be assigned a visible penance.  For example, a public sinner may be required to wear some kind of penitential garb and to stay in the back of the church during Mass for six months or 365 days.  Only at the end of that period of penance would he be admitted back into full communion with the Church.  Even during those early centuries, however, the practice of indulgences was emerging.  For example, if you caved in under pressure of persecution and publicly denied your faith, that was the grave sin of apostasy, and if you repented, you would be given a hefty penance.  But that penance could be lessened if you were to go visit a future martyr or confessor who had not caved in and who was being held in prison for their faith.  You would get this holy person to sign an affidavit by which they would express their desire to apply the merits of their sacrifice to your penance.  Then you would bring this document to the bishop, and some or all of your penance could be remitted.

After the period of the Roman persecutions, obtaining this kind of remission of penance through the merits of the saints continued.  Thus, the practice of indulgences emerged.  Until recently, the relative value of the different indulgences was still expressed by correlating them to certain amounts of days – this harkens back to the early Church and its public penances, which were assigned for specific periods of time.  Today, as mentioned in an earlier post, this method of expressing the relative value of indulgences has been simplified.  Instead of specific numbers of days, we just have partial or plenary (full) indulgences.

The Real Issue

That’s some complicated background (you can find a more detailed explanation here) that can help you understand where the length-of-time factor came from.  But I don’t think that’s what is really causing you the difficulty.  After all, we really don’t have the final say about how much benefit is bestowed when we obtain an indulgence.  God is the final arbiter, and since only he can see our hearts, only he can see how pure is our love, our intention, and our detachment from sin – all of which are factors that contribute to the fruitfulness of any spiritual exercise we undertake.  If we ever find ourselves getting caught up in the math, we can be sure that we are losing focus.

The real difficulty with the practice of indulgences, I think, is rooted elsewhere.  Generally speaking (and it’s always dangerous to generalize), our culture has lost a keen sense of sin.  We tend to belittle the reality of sin and the seriousness of its consequences.  This is partially a result of the influence of modern, secular psychology, which attributes blame not to free choice, but to subconscious influences and tendencies.  But our faith teaches us that there is only one thing in the universe more horrible than a venial sin, and that is a mortal sin.  Sin is rebellion against God.  Every sin is an attempt to destroy the universe.  It is spiritual self-mutilation.  It is spiritual chain-saw-massacring.  When we spread lies about someone, for example, we actually upset the order of the cosmos; we do lasting damage to souls – ours and others’ – souls that were created for eternal life and redeemed by Christ on the cross.  Sin is a spiritual suicide-bomber attack.

If we really perceived the gravity of sin, we would more readily perceive the real need for penance and reparation.  Then we would better understand the wisdom and the gentle love of God expressed in his giving to the Church the beautiful practice of indulgences.  Through this practice, God offers us a concrete way to help right wrongs in the spiritual realm, to pour out spiritual balm on spiritual wounds, and to reestablish spiritual peace in war-torn souls.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD

Please explain plenary indulgences and purgatory! – Part III

Based on your feedback and further consideration on the initial question, I thought I should share a few more thoughts on this topic.

The Days of Our Indulgences

I want to start with two clarifications. First of all, one reader referred to the older practice of linking indulgences with particular numbers of “days” in purgatory. That practice has been officially phased out, not because it was doctrinally false, but because it was so easily misunderstood. It fostered the kind of mathematical piety that some of our readers are rightly uncomfortable with. The current practice is much simplified. The popes grant indulgences for certain pious actions (praying the stations of the cross, lifting your heart to God during the day, reading the Scriptures each day…), but they no longer assign numbers of days. Rather, they are simply partial or full indulgences.

This means that they can help make reparation for our sins and those of the faithful who are now in purgatory. The Church doesn’t want us to think of salvation as a math problem that we can calculate and manipulate. And yet, the Church recognizes that our active love for God and neighbor can make a real positive impact on our souls and those of our brothers and sisters. Indulgences are simply one expression of this beautiful aspect of God’s plan for salvation.

Doctrine Options

And that brings us to the second clarification. Indulgences are not merely an expression of popular piety. Expressions of popular piety, like pilgrimages, novenas to saints, and prayer vigils, are encouraged by the Church insofar as they help some of us stay energetic in our pursuit of holiness. But they are entirely optional.

Even the Rosary (probably the most popular of all) is entirely optional, though it has been strongly recommended by every pope since the start of the twentieth century. Even approved Marian apparitions (Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe…) are not an integral part of the Catholic faith. No Catholic has to believe in them or be devoted to them. They belong to what is known as private revelations.

Whereas doctrines like the Resurrection of Christ and the Immaculate Conception are not optional. They are integral parts of Revelation, and knowingly rejecting them is a sin against faith. Indulgences are closer to this side of the spectrum; they are both a doctrine and a practice. In other words, believing in indulgences is not optional. It is taught by the teaching authority of the Church as a true doctrine, as integrally related to Revelation. So, even if some of us don’t like the doctrine and the practice, even if we don’t try to obtain them, we must accept the truth of indulgences as part of our faith.

In fact, an entire subsection of the Catechism is dedicated to explaining and praising this doctrine and practice. (I have reproduced it below, if you want to see it – #s 1471-1480).

The Heart of the Matter

Those were the easy items. Now comes the hard part. I am glad that our readers were so honest with their responses to this Q&A, because some of those responses raise an important issue.

The Catholic Church is, precisely, Catholic, i.e. universal. Within this spiritual family we find every possible type of personality and temperament, every single level of education and formation, and all existing cultural variations. This is part of the richness of what it means to be Catholic. And this richness has practical repercussions in the realm of piety, of expressions of faith.

Many native Mexicans, for example, make the last miles of their pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe on their knees, painfully shuffling over concrete and stone as a sign of their devotion. Bosnian Catholics cherish their tradition of climbing Cross Mountain barefoot, as an act of penance. Now, all of us may not feel called to these kinds of faith-expressions, but we should all respect them.

We must try to guard our hearts against the temptation to judge others by the standard of our own limited perspective, our own personal preferences. This is precisely why we are so blessed to have a clear explanation of our faith in the Catechism, and a divinely guided teaching authority in the Church. Those are the standards by which we should strive to evaluate and judge what we experience and encounter.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that only God can see into the depths of the human heart. Only he knows which members of the lightening-fast-Rosary-group are raving hypocrites, and which are truly and beautifully praying.

When we are tempted to pass judgment on others, we should ask God to remind us that we are not called to judge, but to love, which can certainly involve sisterly correction and instruction, but never condemns one’s neighbor. As Jesus made so uncomfortably clear: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).

X. INDULGENCES

1471 The doctrine and practice of indulgences in the Church are closely linked to the effects of the sacrament of Penance.

What is an indulgence?

“An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.“81

“An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin.“82 The faithful can gain indulgences for themselves or apply them to the dead.83

The punishments of sin

1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.84

The forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion with God entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin, but temporal punishment of sin remains. While patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace. He should strive by works of mercy and charity, as well as by prayer and the various practices of penance, to put off completely the “old man” and to put on the “new man.“85

In the Communion of Saints

1474 The Christian who seeks to purify himself of his sin and to become holy with the help of God’s grace is not alone. “The life of each of God’s children is joined in Christ and through Christ in a wonderful way to the life of all the other Christian brethren in the supernatural unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, as in a single mystical person.“86

1475 In the communion of saints, “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth. between them there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things.“87 In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others, well beyond the harm that the sin of one could cause others. Thus recourse to the communion of saints lets the contrite sinner be more promptly and efficaciously purified of the punishments for sin.

1476 We also call these spiritual goods of the communion of saints the Church’s treasury, which is “not the sum total of the material goods which have accumulated during the course of the centuries. On the contrary the ‘treasury of the Church’ is the infinite value, which can never be exhausted, which Christ’s merits have before God. They were offered so that the whole of mankind could be set free from sin and attain communion with the Father. In Christ, the Redeemer himself, the satisfactions and merits of his Redemption exist and find their efficacy.“88

1477 “This treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are truly immense, unfathomable, and even pristine in their value before God. In the treasury, too, are the prayers and good works of all the saints, all those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ the Lord and by his grace have made their lives holy and carried out the mission in the unity of the Mystical Body.“89

Obtaining indulgence from God through the Church

1478 An indulgence is obtained through the Church who, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus, intervenes in favor of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins. Thus the Church does not want simply to come to the aid of these Christians, but also to spur them to works of devotion, penance, and charity.90

1479 Since the faithful departed now being purified are also members of the same communion of saints, one way we can help them is to obtain indulgences for them, so that the temporal punishments due for their sins may be remitted.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD