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Contrition

THE initial step of the soul’s meeting with God bears the mark of contrition. The man whose heart is smitten by the word of Christ, whom Jesus’ face has brought to his knees, will at first say with St. Peter: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Confrontation of our own selves with God renders us conscious of our unworthiness and sinfulness.

That consciousness of sin fills us with pain: the guilt we have incurred burns our souls. Thus, with a contrite heart we fall on our knees before God, exclaiming: “To Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee,”

It is in repenting our sins that we expressly repudiate evil, and revert to God. By the same token we also experience our sin turning in enmity against us: “My sin is always against me” (Ps. 50:5). Without this basic revocation of our offenses against God there can be no genuine surrender to Him; without a radical breach with our past sins we can evince no readiness to be transformed by God, nor obey Christ’s call, sequere me. It is true penitence, it is contrition alone which thus melts the encrusted heart so that that fluidity of which we have spoken becomes possible—and with it, reformation by Christ.

What is the essence, however, of true penitence?

     Bad conscience is not the same as contrition

There exists a kind of bad conscience which must be sharply distinguished from penitence. We can well imagine a sinner who, without being really penitent, suffers from a guilty conscience. He is oppressed with pangs of conscience: he is aware of acting badly, and that awareness disturbs his peace and deprives him of inner harmony. Yet, he still refuses to capitulate; he seeks to benumb his conscience, and clings to solidarity with his sins. This kind of sinner is typified by Macbeth, while sinners like Richard III or Don Giovanni are not bothered by remorse at all. But remorse as such may involve no metanoia, no change of heart. In spite of his bad conscience, a man may refuse to shift his position: he may persevere in deliberate identity with himself as the author of his sins and, much though they oppress him, heap new sins upon the old ones. He may harden his heart against remorse, being loath to reverse his path.

     Contrition requires a repudiation of our past sins

In contradistinction to that attitude of soul, true penitence means a definite revulsion from one’s sins, and active repudiation of them. It means a disavowal of the past, a relinquishment of one’s former position with its implication of sinning. He who is seized by contrition repudiates his former self, and abandons his former position completely. He quits the fortress of self-assertion, and casts off his armor. He humiliates himself, and submits to the voice of his conscience. The very disharmony which reigns in his soul will be changed in its quality when he experiences contrition. The dull, passive feeling of depression, poisoned with the note of inner discord and disintegration that results essentially from sin as such, will yield its place to the vivid pain with which the person now reacts to his sin. His heart is transpierced by that pain; but at the same time it is already illuminated by a ray of yearning toward the Good.

Contrition implies that we not only deplore the sin we have committed but condemn it expressly, denouncing, as it were, our allegiance to it. We would revoke the wrong we have perpetrated. But immediately the consciousness of our impotence to do so will dawn upon us: for we are not at liberty to undo the guilt engendered by our deed. We feel clearly that our change of heart and our new orientation are unable to dissolve the sin and to erase the guilt. Therefore, unless it implies hope for God’s mercy, contrition must lead to despair. Judas’ contrition was of this kind.

     Contrition involves our surrender to God’s mercy

In true Christian penitence, there is always present a positive relation to God, grafted on the negation of sin. It forms in us an attitude of self-effacement before God, and of surrender to Him. We are willing to do penance and to make atonement for our sins; we offer ourselves to God so as to receive our just punishment, whatever it be, from His hands. Moreover, we seize, as it were, the spear of atonement that is to transfix us, and cooperate with the gesture that represents God’s reaction to our sins. Yet, confiding in God’s mercy which will open to us the path of reconciliation with Him, and believing in His power to erase all guilt of sin, we also ask in penitence for His forgiveness.

True penitence makes appeal to God’s mercy, and solicits from Him the forgiveness of sin. While the Christian knows that penitence by itself is unable to abolish the guilt, he also knows that “the Lamb of God hath taken away all sins”; and that for Christ’s sake a merciful and almighty God, Who alone has the power of absolving from guilt, will pardon all who with a contrite heart confess their guilt unto Him. That turning away from sin which is implicit in penitence also means, therefore, a return toward God: a flight toward the refuge which is God’s mercy. Though we are conscious of having no claim to pardon—as was the Prodigal Son, saying: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee: I am not worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:18-49)—at the same time we put our trust in the incomprehensible forbearance and mercifulness of God. Such was the penitence of David after his sin with Uriah’s wife (as contrasted to Adam’s consciousness of guilt, who after his fall, hid himself from God, and sought to flee from Him). Such, again, was the penitence of St. Peter after his denial of Christ, when the loving glance of Jesus transpierced his heart.

     Christian contrition yearns for reconciliation with God

While the hope of reconciliation with God and His forgiveness of our guilt is not, properly speaking, an element of contrition as such, it is essentially formative of the Christian’s contrition distinguishing it sharply from genuine repentance of the purely natural order. The pain inherent in the consciousness of sin will not decrease thereby: on the contrary, in facing the infinite charity and mercy of God it cannot but be greatly intensified. The pain, though deeper, will be more lightly colored, as it were, and assume a quality of limpidity; it becomes a liberating pain of love. It is this kind of contrition only which calls forth tears: to the dull contrition of despair, the gift of liberation which lies in weeping is denied; it may excite, at most, tears of rage against oneself. We may contrast the tears with which St. Mary Magdalene washed the feet of the Lord with that dry, despairing, dull contrition of a Judas which does not make the heart bleed but petrifies it.

Besides the pain aroused by contemplation of past sins, true penitence also implies a longing for reconciliation with God, and a desire to walk once more in His paths. Thus, it contains not merely a reference to the past but a direction to the future as well. That deep desire no more to separate ourselves from God is immanent to the change of heart which underlies penitence. True, the concrete decision with God is not yet effected; nor is man able to obtain that reconciliation by his own force: it can be achieved by God alone.

     Contrition also renounces future sins

Nevertheless, penitence implies more than the condemnation of sins committed, and the gesture of their renunciation. It implies more than the desire, ineffective by itself, to undo them. In addition to the inherent silent words, “How could I do this?” true penitence also implies these further words, “I will never do this again”—that is to say, the renunciation of sin even in regard to the future. Certainly this element is not present in full actuality; the reference to the past is formally predominant. Still, inasmuch as it involves an essential renunciation of sin, penitence is also implicitly directed towards the future.

     Repudiation of past sins is the very essence of contrition

This must not delude us, however, into undervaluing that repudiation of the past which is the prime characteristic of contrition, and which renders it a sine qua non of true inner conversion. People who believe it sufficient to do no wrong henceforth, while simply passing over their record of wrongdoings, will not truly reform. The amended conduct they may display for the time being has something accidental about it. Being blind to the necessity of accepting responsibility for their past misdeeds, and claiming as it were a right of prescription in regard to moral wrongs, they cannot have attained to a conscious relationship with the world of moral values nor grasped the inexorable demand which emanates from that world. Such persons have not yet reached the stage of moral adulthood. They have not yet seized the basic truth that man is not responsible for his present behavior alone; that, according to the continuity which is essential to him, he remains in solidarity with everything he has done until he disavows it expressly. When such people say, “Why should we bother about past things, since we can no longer alter them?,” they merely prove that the call embodied in the world of moral values, which also requires a disavowal of things that can no longer be undone, is still past their understanding, A genuine moral awakening and a genuine movement toward God necessarily involve an active position toward wrongs perpetrated at a former period. True contrition is impossible without arousing pain by the memory of each sin taken singly, together with one’s former attitude in general, and without an express repudiation of past deeds.

     Contrition requires us to seek God’s pardon

Nor is this all. A real change of heart also demands our consciousness of the fact that we cannot obtain a reconciliation with God until the wrong is forgiven by Him, and atoned for by us. He who is really converted to God, and in His sight suddenly understands his former position, also understands that his guilt separates him from God. He is unreconciled with God so long as that guilt subsists, and lacks the power to conjure it away by himself. He knows that his repentance and remorse by themselves, his disavowal of transgressions committed, his breach with his former life and his search for a new orientation are insufficient to pull down the partition wall erected by his guilt which separates him from God. He knows that the guilt cannot be abolished except by divine forgiveness, and that it is Christ Who “taketh away the sins of the world” and, finally, that Christ spoke to St. Peter the words: “Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). The Christian knows that God has granted him the great gift of grace which is the sacrament of Penance. He has the certainty that, if he penitently confesses his sins to the minister of God, Christ will erase his guilt, and will bridge the chasm that separates him, as a sinner, from God. He knows that absolution by the priest clears away the obstacle to the unfolding of supernatural life in his soul, thus raising him once more to the state of grace.

Objectively, even, contrition as such involves a radical inward change (and a change that cannot be accomplished without contrition). The painful evocation and condemnation of past sins, the groping for a new basis of orientation, the movement of reconversion to God—these aspects by themselves testify to an essential inward change. But all this is far from being equivalent to an abolition of the guilt incurred. The disuniting effect of the latter persists, and continues to lie in the path of a reconciliation with God. That guilt can only be eliminated by God’s act of pardon, and be compensated for by the blood of Christ, of which it is said in the hymn of St. Thomas: “Of which a single drop, for sinners spilt, can purge the entire world from all its guilt.”

The sacrament of Penance, strictly speaking, is not indispensable for redeeming man from his guilt. In regard to a venial sin, the act of repentance itself may be an adequate substitute for the sacrament; in regard to a grave sin, an act of perfect contrition may similarly suffice, provided that confession is impracticable—just as in the baptism of desire and the baptism of blood, an inner act and a heroic action, respectively, may stand for the sacrament of Baptism. But even in such cases it is not the indwelling force of the human act of penitence as such which abolishes the guilt: this is done, always and solely, by Christ through His death on the Cross. The change of heart, as implied in contrition, merely opens the path for the influx of the redeeming blood of Christ. Penitence reestablishes the link with Christ, by virtue of which the fruits of Christ’s deed of redemption may be applied to us.

Even the penitence of the Prophets, and of all those who lived before Christ, did not achieve the removal of guilt on its own strength: here, too, the forgiveness of guilt was due to the redeeming sacrifice of Christ.

     Contrition contributes to a deeper change of heart

Yet, while penitence as such is incapable of actually securing absolution from sin, it does possess (as we have seen) an objective efficacy for inward change, which is specific to it and which has no substitute. Subjectively, however—concerning the penitent’s own state of consciousness, that is to say—he must be dominated by the feeling that without the abolition of his guilt even his change of heart as such would lack reality, and that all his desire for becoming another man would remain ineffectual unless his guilt be taken away first by the blood of Christ. It should be clearly understood that it is precisely this subjective consciousness which conditions the objective reality of the change of heart implied in penitence. We encounter here one of those mysterious paradoxes of the spiritual life to which Revelation alone provides us with the key, and to which the eyes of the world will ever remain blind. They are all intimately related to these words of Jesus: “Every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

     Contrition involves the yearning for sanctification

True penitence involves, furthermore, a burning desire not only for forgiveness of the guilt of sin but for purification and sanctification, as well as the belief in their accomplishment by the grace of God. The prayer for pardon and for purification, and the resolve never again to separate ourselves from God in the future proceed therefrom. There also exists a passive form of penitence which includes hope for God’s mercy and pardon, but not for purification and sanctification. In his false humility, this kind of penitent considers himself so hopelessly sinful that he dismisses the belief in his emendation as presumptuous. It would seem to him that he can do no better than commend himself, in all his sinfulness, to the mercy of God, and endure all the misery of sin with patience. In its Lutheran version, the dogmatic concept of justification appears to foster such a purely passive repentance. For Luther knows no purification and sanctification but merely a non-imputation of our sins for the sake of Christ. This purely passive repentance—the contrary extreme, as it were, to that other error of considering a good resolution for the future sufficient, and contrition superfluous—generates no resolution to begin a new life in Christ.

Yet, he who is filled with true penitence will not only say to God: “Turn away Thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities,” but continue thus: “Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels. . . . Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.” The true Christian, though mindful of the fact that left to himself he would fall again and again, also knows that in Baptism he has received from Christ a supernatural principle of holy life, and that through God’s grace he shall—and can—become a new man. He knows that God wills his cooperation in this process of transformation: “He Who hath created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee” (St. Augustine, Sermo 169.13).

Contrition does not paralyze the Christian, nor does it deprive him of fortitude. In his act of penitence he will contemplate, not so much his own weakness as the merciful arms of God that are extended to receive him into His holiness, and the force that rises in him once he throws himself into the arms of God. He knows contrition to be the necessary precondition to any purification and sanctification, seeing that any resolve not born of the pain of contrition is condemned to shallowness and sterility because it is not rooted in the ultimate depths of the soul nor conceived out of an ultimate surrender to God. Contrition alone may thus melt our hearts so as to enable us to receive and preserve the imprint of a basic new orientation towards God.

The true Christian says with David, “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 50:19). From contrition thus experienced there will arise in him the genuine and heroic determination to become a new man. That kind of contrition alone enables him again to anchor himself in God. It is against the background of his weakness and wretchedness that he forms the resolution, cleansed of all illusions and conceived in holy sobriety, never again to separate himself from God, that he assumes the holy courage to put off, with God’s help, the old man, and to put on the new man in Christ.

“Lord God, King of heaven and earth: deign to guide and to sanctify, to direct and to govern today our hearts and our bodies, our thoughts, our words and our works according to Thy law and in fulfillment of Thy mandates: so that with Thy help we become saved and free, here and in eternity, Savior of the world” (Prayer from the Prime of the Breviary).

     Contrition is a form of radical self-surrender

The aspect which is entirely specific to true penitence is that of radical self-surrender. Pride and obduracy melt away. The natural tendency to self-assertion which is otherwise so firmly fixed in our nature—and which makes us reluctant to admit a wrong we have done or to ask a person whom we have wronged to forgive us—is renounced by the penitent. He surrenders himself in humble charity. The tight impermeability of his soul toward God and his fellow creatures disappears. The spasm of dogmatic obstinacy, forcing him always to defend his position, is relaxed. He assumes a state of mind receptive to the Good in all its forms; he divests himself of all self-preservation to the point of full defenselessness.

     Contrition awakens our soul in its depths

But to that moral process in breadth, as it were, corresponds a no less decisive one in depth. Contrition arouses us from the sleep of unspiritual existence, from what might be called a mere living away. It awakens us to a keen consciousness of the things that ultimately matter: the metaphysical situation of man, considered in its full gravity; our status under God’s law, and our character as confronted with Him; the task and the responsibility imposed on us by God; the importance of our earthly life for our eternal destiny. Contrition causes us to withdraw from our peripheral interests and to concentrate on the depths. It is in contrition that we respond to the infinite holiness of our absolute Lord, the eternal Judge, whose judgment we cannot evade; and on the other hand, to our own sinfulness.

     Contrition imparts moral beauty to the soul

That is why contrition embodies the primal word of fallen man addressing God. Not only is it indispensable for our transformation in Christ and our acquisition of that fluid quality which renders us susceptible of such a transformation; it also imparts to the soul of man a unique character of beauty. For it is in contrition that the new fundamental attitude of a humble and reverent charity becomes dominant and manifest, that man abandons the fortress of pride and self-sovereignty, and leaves the dreamland of levity and complacency, repairing to the place where he faces God in reality.

Therefore did Our Lord speak the words: “Even so there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doeth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7). By the just are meant neither the saints on the one hand nor the Pharisees on the other, but persons who, while leading a correct life and avoiding all transgressions in the strict sense of the term, never come to achieve that full surrender to God which (in a humanity tainted with original sin) is possible in contrition alone. Such persons are anxious to keep God’s commandments but they never discover the immense, unbridgeable abyss that separates the holiness of God from our sinfulness. Full self-surrender and the renunciation of all self-assertion (however hidden); the spiritual position of standing naked before God and throwing oneself altogether upon His mercy—these are things beyond their range of experience. They fail to become entirely conscious of the metaphysical situation of man; they never so radically relinquish their own selves as does man in the throes of contrition; they never open themselves so unreservedly in humility and charity, nor do they ever assess the full gravity of our destiny before the face of God. They never descend so low as to be lifted up by God.

With this type of just persons, we may contrast the image of Mary Magdalene the public sinner, as she, stricken to her knees by the sight of Jesus, washes His feet with her tears. We perceive the new life nascent in her contrite soul. We sense the response of her heart, softened by the melting fire of humility and charity. It is to her, the repentant sinner, and not to Simon who sat beside Him in the consciousness of not having offended God, that Jesus spoke: “Thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace” (Luke 7:50). And she it was who before all others was found worthy to announce to the Apostles the Resurrection of the Lord.