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By Root 2125 0

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.