Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [21]
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