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Fifteenth Monday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 21
- 4 min read
Fifteenth Monday after Pentecost. Necessity of Penitence.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
After having laid in humility the solid foundation of all the virtues, we will raise upon this foundation the first stones of the building, which are penance and mortification, which are called by the saints the virtues proper to the purgative life, because they tend to cleanse the soul from past vices and bad tendencies in regard to the future. We shall therefore consider to-morrow: 1st, the necessity of penance; 2d, its urgency. We will thence deduce the resolution: 1st, to offer all our actions to God in a spirit of expiation and of penance for our past sins; 2d, cheerfully to accept in this same spirit all the trials and crosses we may meet with during the day. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of Our Lord: “Except you do penance, you shall all perish” (Luke xiii. 5).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore the Son of God, who in order to show us the necessity of penance and the obligation incumbent upon every man to perform it, begins by the preaching of this virtue to announce the gospel (Mark i. 15), expressly declaring that without it there is no salvation ! Let us render to Him a thousand thanksgivings for the knowledge He gives us of this great truth.
The Necessity of Doing Penance.
We have all sinned; we ought therefore to do penance until our death, Tertullian concludes. By receiving baptism, we receive the Spirit of God shed upon Jesus Christ penitent; therefore we are obliged to perform continual penance. There is in all of us a tendency to evil which requires to be combated by penance, without which we should be lost; therefore the future to forestall, as well as the past to repair, obliges us to a penance which will last as long as our life. Even the sins which are pardoned have left in our souls a wound to be healed, a temporal debt to pay in this world or in the other; therefore we ought every day to do penance, and to fear the chastisements with which God threatens those who do not perform it. There is no reason to say that, Our Lord having fully satisfied for us the justice of His Father, we are thereby freed from the obligation of doing penance. Let us believe St. Paul, who says: “I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh” (Coloss. i. 24). Let us believe Jesus Christ Himself, who has said: “Except you do penance, you shall all perish” (Luke xiii. 5). Whence it follows that although the goodness of God is infinite, He will not show mercy to any who have not done penance. We must therefore do penance, and a true penance which shall convert us, and not one of those false kinds of penance of which St. Ambrose complained when he said: “I have known more persons who have preserved their baptismal innocence than I have met with others who have recovered it by perfect penance.”
The Urgent Necessity of Performing Penance.
In the same proportion as it is necessary to perform penance, it is of urgent necessity to do so. The Holy Spirit says to us: “Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day” (Ecclus. v. 8). It is a bad thing to say, I quite feel that I am not what I ought to be, I do not wish to die in my present state; later on I will reform my life. And until when will you defer it ? asks St. Augustine. Why to-morrow ? Why not this very day reform your life ? Do we forget that to-morrow is uncertain, that it is folly to risk our salvation upon a perhaps and to abandon our eternity to chance ? How is it we do not understand that it is unworthy to make use of the goodness of God for a pretext to delay our conversion, alleging that He is too good not to wait for us, as though His goodness and mercy ought not, on the contrary, to be a powerful reason for advancing our penitence rather than delaying it? (Rom. ii. 4.) We imagine that later on our conversion will be easier, as if, on the contrary, our delays did not render it more difficult by weakening grace, strengthening habits, hardening our hearts, and irritating God against us (Ibid. 5). At other times we imagine that our conversion is incompatible with our present affairs and our employments, as though the business of our salvation were not the first and most important of all that we can have to do with in this world; as if, also, there were any employments wherein salvation is impossible. Lastly, the devil perhaps tries to make us believe that at the hour of death we shall imitate the good thief; as though we could count upon Our Lord renewing that miracle for us, a miracle which was one of the greatest He ever did, and the only one which occurs in the Scriptures, says St. Bernard. There was one sole man that was thus saved at the last moment; there was one that you may not despair; there was only one that you may not trust to it (St. Bernard). To trust to it is the last degree of imprudence.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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