Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [23]
“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