Lenten Reflections 2

Introduction
Recently, Polycarp Cardinal Pengo, the Archbishop of Dar Es Salaam, called Christians to repent and review their ways of life. His homily, preached at “Pugu Martyrs” pilgrim site, was taken up by several media houses. The reason why they focused on it might not be so obvious but his call was clear. “God is inviting us for the safety of our souls so that everybody is involved directly in hearing His word and change his ways for us to be saved,” he said. He has earlier insisted, “I will continue to denounce every evil done by leaders [politicians] who are in the government now, even if it means I have to die fighting for the truth, I am ready.”
This call to change, together with my previous reflection on penance and reparation calls for this question: how shall we “change our ways”?
How to Practice Penance and Reparation
We have come to the third and, in a way, most important part of our subject: How? I say it is the most important because we could talk for hours about the theology of penance and reparation and end up, wiser perhaps, but not holier. We must take the next and final step, and ask ourselves, practically, what am to do about it?
In order to come to the point immediately, let me give you what I call seven rules, three for penance and four for reparation. They can be expressed in seven words, where each word is a divine command as follows: pray, Share, forgive [for penance]; Work, Endure, Deprive, and sacrifice [in reparation].
Suppose we spend a moment on each of these seven rules, and ask Our Lord, to open our hearts to respond with generosity to His offended Sacred Heart.
Rule #1 - Pray
God expects more of us because we have sinned. And the first more that all of us can put into practice, is more prayer.
• Call it giving more time each day to prayer.
• Call it attending Mass more often.
• Call it reciting the Rosary more frequently.
• Call it being more attentive when we pray.
• Call it more fervor in our life of prayer.
• Call it getting more people to join us when we pray.
• No matter, the first rule of salutary penance is more prayer.
Rule #2 - Share
Remember what Christ told us the night before He died. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." If all sin is a failure in loving God, and we mainly show our love for God by loving one another, then we had better show our love for others by sharing with them what God has given to us.
Again the word more comes in. We are to examine our conscience and ask ourselves, what more can I share with those whom God has placed into my life?
• Can I give more of my time to others?
• Can I share more of my knowledge with others?
• Can I share more of my skill with others?
• Can I share more of my money with others?
• Can I share more of my Catholic faith with others?
Each of us is different in this matter of sharing because each of us is living a different life with different people whom God's Providence places in our path. The second rule for the practice of penance is more sharing.
Rule #3 - Forgive
Christ could not have been more explicit in urging us to forgive others who offend us. He gave us whole parables on the subject of forgiveness. He warned us that God will be as merciful to us as we are forgiving to others. He placed, in the center of The Lord's Prayer, a frightening invocation, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
Once again, it behooves us to look to our practice of forgiveness of injuries, so to be more forgiving in the future than we have been in the past.
• Can I be more forgiving by forgetting what others have done to me?
• Can I be more forgiving by ignoring the unkindness and thoughtlessness and perhaps meanness that others commit against me?
No two of us are living the same lives. Each of us have different people saying or doing or failing to say or do things that hurt us and, perhaps, crush the very heart of our souls. The third rule of penance is to be more forgiving.
Rule #4 - Work
We now shift from penance to reparation, and our first directive is to work. How is work a form of reparation of sin? It is reparation because our fallen human nature dislikes to exert itself. Work is a form of mortification that all of us can look to see whether we could not work harder than we are doing - in performance of tasks that are part of our state in life.
By nature we are prone to first do what we like, then what is useful, and finally, what is necessary.
I cannot think of a more effective kind of reparation than to set our minds to reversing that order.
We should first do what is necessary, then what is useful, and only then what is pleasant or what we like.
Rule #5 - Endure
In some ways this is the keystone of reparation, the patient endurance of the sufferings and trials that God sends us.
God in His mercy sends us the Cross in order to try our patience that we might save our souls and the souls of many others besides.
The variety of these trials sent us by God defies classification and their intensity depends on a thousand factors that differ with different people. If we are to expiate sin we must resign ourselves to endure pain. But, as we know, there are degrees and degrees to this resignation.
• Can we accept misunderstanding from others with greater peace of mind?
• Can we be more generous in doing what we know God wants us to do, although doing it is painful?
• Can we suffer without pitying ourselves?
• Can we put up with discomfort, or distaste, or disability, without becoming bitter about what we are tempted to consider injustice on the part of God?
Yes, God's violations are blessings, and the crosses He sends us are tokens of His love. But how we need the light of faith to see this, and the strength of His grace to do this -- in reparation for sin, as the price we must pay to reach heaven, where every tear will be wiped away and all the past, which is now the present, will have passed away.
Rule #6 - Deprive
Our sixth rule is to practice reparation by depriving ourselves of something we now have that we could, if we wanted to, do without.
• It may be some luxury in the home,
• Or some delicacy at table,
• Or some comfort in our way of living,
• Or some ornament or adult toy that we could just as well do without.
Call it mortification or self-denial; whatever the name, the basic idea is to expiate for sins of self-indulgence by giving up. When we sin we offend God by choosing some creature to which we have no right. When we practice mortification, we make reparation by choosing to deprive ourselves of some creature we have a right to -- why, in order to undo the harm caused by sin and thus propitiate the offended justice of God.
Rule #7 - Sacrifice
I have saved sacrifice for the end because it synthesizes everything we have so far said.
• What is sacrifice? Sacrifice is the surrender of something to God.
• Sacrifice is the heart of penance and reparation.
When we sacrifice, we let go with our wills of whatever we could legitimately possess and enjoy because we want to make up to God for having stupidly chosen some creature in preference to the Creator.
We return to where we began by stressing that when we sacrifice, we do more than we would have done; we give up more than we would have given up; we surrender more of what we like in order to -- in plain English -- prove to God that we love Him.
There is an episode in the Gospels that perfectly synthesizes this cardinal mystery of sin and penitential reparation.
Remember after the Resurrection when Christ asked Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than the others do?" Why the question? Because Peter had sinned; sinned more than the others who had remained faithful to the Master. Peter was expected to love Christ more. Why more? Because he had more to sacrifice in order to expiate more because he had so deeply sinned in denying the Saviour.
Conclusion
As we look into our hearts we must humbly confess that truly, we have sinned, sinned often, sinned deeply, sinned willfully.
But God is good. He gives us the privilege of not only expiating what we have done wrong, but actually becoming more pleasing to Him by our penance and reparation.
It was no pious statement that St. Paul gave us when he said, "Where sin abounded, grace has even more abounded." In other words, in God's providence, He allows us to sin so we might repent and become saints.