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Fifteenth Tuesday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 22, 2025
- 4 min read
Fifteenth Tuesday after Pentecost. Excellence of the Virtue of Penitence.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will tomorrow consider in our meditation: 1st, the excellence of the virtue of penance; 2d, the advantages which true penitents derive from their falls. We will then make the resolution: 1st, after each action to examine into the defects which have been mingled with it, and to repair them by performing the following action better; 2d, heartily to accept, and in a spirit of penance, all the crosses we may meet with during the day. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the gospel: “Bring forth fruits worthy of penance” (Luke iii. 8).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Jesus Christ, the head and chief of the penitents of the whole Church: penitent in the womb of Mary, where He expiates our crimes; penitent in the crib, where His tears wash away our stains; penitent at Nazareth, where He bears, by a laborious life, the penalty of our sins; penitent at Gethsemani, where He weeps over the iniquities of the world with tears of blood; penitent at the praetorium and on Calvary, where, as the victim of the crimes of the earth, He gives up His body to torments and to death. Let us render to Him our homage in the state to which His love for us reduced Him.
The Excellence of the Virtue of Penance.
Our Lord esteems this virtue so highly that in the gospel He praises it at every opportunity. He preaches it in all places and to all kinds of persons. However holy and innocent He may be in Himself, He wills exclusively to lead an extraordinarily penitent life, that He may enable us to feel the excellence of the virtue of penance and its great merit before God. All the saints, entering into the views of Our Lord, have held penance in special esteem. There is not one of them who has not honored and practised it; not one who has not lovingly accepted in a spirit of penance all the trials of life, all the opportunities of mortifying and vanquishing themselves. The reason is that, considered in itself, penance is of marvellous excellence. It destroys the empire of the devil in souls, and substitutes for it the reign of Jesus Chr1st. From being slaves of Satan it makes us children of God; from being guilty it makes us just; after being victims of hell it makes us co-heirs of Jesus Christ and fills heaven and earth with joy; it breaks our chains and gives us the crown of justice; it not only obtains for us the pardon of our faults, but also eternal glory, says St. Cyprian. Are these the lofty sentiments of esteem and love which we feel for penance ? Do we not, on the contrary, hold it in such aversion that we look upon a life of penance as being an unhappy life, and consider Lent and other seasons which the Church sets apart for penance as being melancholy and disagreeable? Have we not ridiculed those who make a profession of penance ? Have we never thought and said that penance is incompatible with health, and that to perform upon our bodies the severities which holy penitents have practised would be to commit homicide ?
The Advantages which True Penitents Derive from their Falls.
God, by His infinite goodness, makes true penitents find, even in their sins, the greatest advantages in regard to their salvation (Rom. viii. 28; St. Augustine, Solil., xxxiii.). Their falls render them more humble, by convincing them still more of their weakness and frailty; they inspire them with a distrust of themselves which makes them be on their guard and have recourse more frequently to praying to Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. They excite them better to fulfil their obligations, to repair their falls, by hastening more quickly along the road of salvation (St. Ambrose, Apolog. David.), to compensate wrongdoing in the past by a multiplicity of good works in the present, in such a manner that there should be a superabundance of justice where formerly there was an abundance of sin, and that they should now do ten times more for the glory of God than they had done against it (Baruch iv. 28). They give them experience which teaches them to take precautions on the side whereby sin has entered into their hearts, like a governor of a city who fortifies the quarter which had once been taken by surprise. Lastly, they work in the soul the penitence of which St. Paul speaks, and which leads to the avoiding with greater vigilance the occasions of sin; to have a greater hatred of ourselves, more zeal for perfection, more fear of dis pleasing God, and more desire of satisfying His justice (II. Cor. vii. 11). It is thus that what is most worthy of repulsion in us may, if we so will, serve as ladders to raise us to God (St. Augustine, Serm. lxxvi. de Temp.) and that even our very falls, if we know how to profit by them, may become means of perfection and instruments of our salvation. Each fault that we commit ought to make us avoid many others. For example, I have failed in charity towards my neighbor; I will thence deduce the resolution to be meek and humble towards all. I have yielded to a feeling of self- love; I will thence conclude that I must firmly and constantly labor to be very humble. Thus evil will turn to our good.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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