Georges de la Tour: The Penitent Magdalene. 1640

Why Penance

Why penance? If I confess my sins and am properly contrite in heart, is that not enough to atone for my sins? Why penance, then? What additional good does penance, self-imposed or otherwise, do to the penitent if a change of heart and mind, metanoia, has already been achieved?

There is a personal answer to the question “why penance” as well as a general one.

Personal Penance

On a personal scale, the damage sin does is not undone by contrition, repentance, confession, even absolution. The sin itself may be forgiven, but the soul must still heal, as must the relationship of the sinner to God and his fellow man. In order to assist this healing process, penance is a powerful tool.

Penance for Sin in General

Aside from personal shortcomings, there is what one can call the ‘sin of the world’. Our world is far from ideal: The ideal state is summed up in the third petition of the Pater Noster: “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In order to contribute to Jesus’ great work of atonement in our own small way, we can align ourselves to His suffering through penitential practices.

Penitential Practices

So now that we know why penance is important, how can we do penance?

There are many ways in which we can do penance. Lent is a time when many people, young and old, abstain from things they usually do or consume, like participation in social media, drinking coffee, or eating sweets. In former times, both the weeks leading up to Christmas (Advent) and the weeks leading up to Easter (Lent) were penitential times, times of preparation for great events in the Christian year. Even at a Christian king’s court, feasting was out of the question in those times.

Other people spend more time in prayer, thus offering time they otherwise might have spent in amusements. They choose this penance in an attempt to attune their mind and soul to the will of God, and often also to avoid the temptations their former amusements contained.

Then there are the physical ‘inconveniences’ people offer to Christ for their own sins and the sins of the world: They take the discipline, wear celices or hair shirts, sleep little and in uncomfortable places, eat sparingly and simply, or hold vigils in honor of Christ and His saints.

Many people do penance by serving others: They feed the poor, cloth the naked, visit the prisoners, both literally and figuratively. Some serve humbly in their families, workplaces, churches, and schools. Others assist the widow and the orphan, the old and the sick, offering up time and resources in atonement for a world spun out of control.

Scourge and Pillar
Scourge and Pillar – Symbols for Penance
The Daily Sacrifice

Ultimately, all penance is practice for the daily sacrifice every one must bring if he wishes to follow Jesus Christ: “Take up your cross and follow me.” With patience and humility, we give our suffering, self-imposed or otherwise, to Christ, and ask Him to turn it into atonement for our own sins as well as the sins of our community, our nation, the human race.

Crossed Keys and a Scourge
Jesus Blessing Us; Benedictine Convent of Hildegard von Bingen in Bingen, Germany; own work

Joyous Sets of Seven

There are sorrowful sets of seven to concentrate on when we align our penance with the suffering of Christ, and there are also joyous sets of seven. Joyous sets of seven invite us to reflect, not so much of our own shortcomings, but on the freedom our Lord Jesus purchased for us. Freedom from sin is a freedom for a life that is governed by the Voice and Will of God, rather than the whisperings and promises of the devil. Such a life is open to welcome the gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in the first verses of Isa 11, where we find the “spirit of the Lord” resting on the “rod out of the stem of Jesse”, as well as on the “Branch” that “shall grow out of his roots”.

Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

It is essential to be aware of and repent from our sins, failures and shortcomings in order to find our way to God. But when we have done so, we also need to fill the house that has been swept clean with that which pleases Our Lord. One of the many places where Scripture discloses what faith produces in us is Isa 11:2 and the following verses. In a contemplative penitential setting, we seek for, ask for, knock on the door for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are (in English and Latin):

  • Wisdom (sapientia),
  • understanding (intellectus),
  • counsel (consilium),
  • fortitude (fortitudo),
  • knowledge (cognitio/scientia),
  • piety (pietas), and
  • fear of the Lord (timor Domini).
Diego Velázquez – Coronation of the Virgin – Prado 1635, detail
The Franciscan Crown: The Seven Joys of Mary

Freedom from sin also allows us to contemplate on the Seven Joys of Mary, Our Blessed Mother, to whom Jesus gave the apostel John, and to us all, to be her children: “Woman, this is your son.” In the Fransciscan tradition, the Seven Joys of Mary are also called The Franciscan Crown. They are prayed very much like a rosary with seven decades instead of five, plus two extra Ave Maria prayers for a total of 72 Ave Marias, one for each year Our Lady lived on this earth.

The Seven Joys of Mary are:

  • The Annunciation,
  • the Visitation,
  • the Nativity of Jesus,
  • the Adoration of the Magi,
  • the Finding in the Temple,
  • the Resurrection of Jesus, and finally,
  • either or both the Assumption of Mary and the Coronation of the Virgin.

“When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the Sacred Heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary.”
~ St. Robert Bellarmine

The Lord's Prayer by James Tissot - detail

Seven Petitions: Thy Will Be Done

We pray the Our Father often, maybe so often that we forget what we are praying for particularly. Seven petitions make up this prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples, seven petitions that we pray to this day. All of them ask God the Father to do something for us, naturally. Many of them require our active participation, some more expressly so than others. And the one petition that sums up this latter part, our part beautifully is: “Thy will be done.”

Thy Will Be Done meme
Thy Will Be Done
Seven Petitions

The seven petitions are:

Hallowed be Thy Name;

Thy kingdom come;

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:

Give us this day our daily [epiousion] bread;

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us;

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

All of these, one can argue, are solely gifts from God. All of these, one can also argue, require a degree of choice on our part. The very fact that we are asking these particular things simply because Our Lord taught us to ask for them, is already a choice. On the other hand, some of these seem quite out of our control, like deliverance from evil, bringing about the kingdom of God, or being given our ‘daily’ bread. Our main responsibility here is to prepare our heart for these, so it seems.

The Hardest Thing

But the hardest thing among the seven, and the one on which the other six hinge, is the third:

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Why is this so hard? It is so hard because in order for God’s will to be done on earth, we have to do what God wants. Not what we want, but what God wants. Therein lies the difficulty, and surely because it is so difficult, this is the one petition that we find reconfirmed by Our Lord during the Agony in the Garden, when he saw all that was going to happen to him in agonizing detail and prayed for the cup to pass Him by. “Thy will be done”, was the end of this petition, however. “Thy will be done, not mine.”

Jesus Gives the Example

So let us draw comfort from the example of Our Lord. “Thy will be done”, even if I am scared, and do not understand why. My understanding is not required. All I need to do is to ask for God’s will to be done, here on earth as well as in heaven, and let things happen the way God wants them to be, rather than be in the way with my own ideas and interpretations. No matter what happens: God knows why.

The Lord's Prayer by James Tissot
The Lord’s Prayer by James Tissot

How do I start aligning my will with God’s? How do I return to a life in accordance with God’s will? Contrition is the first step, and contemplative prayer might be a way past your own understanding and into a closer connection with the divine Will. Start today.

Contemplative Prayer leaf detail

Contemplative Prayer

Contemplation: We can't think our way to God.

Contemplative prayer requires a certain humbling of the intellect. Our thoughts usually take up too much space in our head and often crowd out or drown the quiet voice of the Spirit. Therefore, contemplative prayer aims at creating an inner silence that allows us to listen.

But we all know how difficult it is to ‘think of nothing’. This is where repetition steps in. Repetitive prayer, rather than being vain (see Matthew 6:7), opens a door within that leads to a place where the intellect does not rule. Like the Rosary prayers or the well-known Jesus prayer (see below), it is the soul that turns to God in these repetitions: No new thought needs developed, no new words found. The intensity of our words is increased in contemplative repetitions, not their quantity. Indeed, repetitive prayer is particularly soul-opening when we pray in a language foreign to us because the intellect has no part in it.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Domine Jesu Christe, Filii Dei, miserere mei.

Thus, we do not need to empty our mind. Instead, we fill it with praise, petition, or adoration, in short, with prayer. We cannot think our way to God.

Contemplative Prayer: "In books we seek God; in prayer we find him." Padre Pio
“In books we seek God; in prayer we find Him.” Padre Pio

But while we cannot think our way to God, neither can we feel our way to Him. He will not be limited to the extent of our understanding, and neither will He be limited to the capability of our emotions. Feeling ‘good’ during prayer has very little to do with the intensity or ‘success’ of our prayer, much like having found the ‘right words’ to phrase our worries or petitions has little impact on the quality of our prayer. It might help us think differently about a problem and therefore feel differently about it, too, but it takes no prayer to do that: The Stoics expostulated as much, and successfully so.

Contemplative prayer is not a self-help program, in fact, no prayer, vocal or otherwise, can sufficiently be described as such. Prayer turns our gaze away from ourselves. It looks to God, it addresses God, it listens to God.

St Teresa of Ávila, painted by Peter Paul Rubens

“Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”
St. Teresa of Avila

Benescripsisti Thoma

Contrition: Prerequisite for Pardon

Nobody can obtain pardon for a sin he does not regret because contrition is a prerequisite for pardon. In other words, nobody can expect pardon who keeps on sinning because he has not understood how much his sin offends God. Consequently, he does not cast off all liking for the sin in question. We must abhorr sin deeply so that repentance can bring about a true change of mind and heart. If we do not see what was reprehensible about our behavior, our attitude, our deed, we are still hardened sinners. Contrition describes the breaking up of something hard or unyielding. Without contrition, there cannot be a true, lasting change of behavior, attitudes, deeds. The swept and empty house will welcome in seven more demons and the latter state is worse than the former.


“Since it is requisite for the remission of sin that a man cast away entirely the liking for sin which implies a sort of continuity and solidity in his mind, the act which obtains forgiveness is termed by a figure of speech ‘contrition’.”
St. Thomas Aquinas

But what about forgiving others their trespasses?

Forgiving someone on our part is a different thing. We can forgive another his trespasses without him repenting of said trespasses, as when Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek, or go the extra mile, or hand over the cloak along with the tunic. In such cases, we do something for our own soul: We avoid wrath, and choose humility and forgiveness instead. Thus, the other person’s sins do not become a stumbling block to ourselves. Instead, we prove ourselves true disciples of Jesus who do what the Master Himself did, even from the cross.

Coals of Fire

Now, forgiving someone can do something good for the other’s soul. Our behavior might cause a change of mind or heart – “coals of fire”, you know. But neither is this, nor should this be our motive for doing what is right in the eyes of God. We cannot make people repent of anything. This they must do themselves: Everyone must repent of his own sins first for contrition is the prerequisite for pardon.

The Prayers of the Rosary in Latin


Here are collected all the prayers that you need to pray the Rosary in Latin, in the order in which you will need them. Click here if you are looking for the Rosary prayers in English.

Our Lady of the Rosary
Our Lady of the Rosary
Sanctus

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria Tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in Nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.

Credo

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae,
et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum,
qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine,
passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus,
descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,
ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis,
inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.
Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,
sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem,
remissionem peccatorum,
carnis resurrectionem,
vitam aeternam. Amen.

Pater Noster

Pater noster qui es in caeli
Sanctificetur Nomen Tuum
Adveniat regnum Tuum
Fiat voluntas Tua sicut in caelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie
et demitte nobis debita nostra
sicut es nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem
sed libera nos a malo.
Quia Tuum est regnum et potentia et gloria
in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Ave Maria

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesu.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen.

Gloria

Gloria Patri et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
Sicut erat in principio, et unc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum.
Amen.

O Mi Jesu (Fatima Prayer)

O mi Jesu, demitte nobis debita nostra.
Libera nos ab igne inferni.
Conduc in caelum omnes animas,
praesertam illas que maxime indigent misericordia Tua.
Amen.