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THE  LOVE  OF  JESUS 
TO  PENITENTS. 


BY 


HENRY  EDWARD, 

ARCHBISHOP  OP  WESTMINSTER. 


LONDON : 
BURNS,   GATES,  AND   COMPANY, 

17, 18  Portman  Street  and  63  Paternoster  Row. 
1872. 


TO 

THE  YERY  RET.  EGBERT  ASTON  COFFIN, 

VICE-PROVINCIAL   OF  THE  CONGREGATION   OF 
THE  MOST  HOLY  REDEEMER. 


MY  DEAR  FATHER  COFFIN, 

The  following  pages,  if  they  serve 
no  other  purpose,  will  at  least  convey  to 
you  my  loving  veneration  for  St.  Alphonsus 
and  my  affectionate  attachment  to  his  sons. 
To  St.  Alphonsus,  more  than  to  any  other 
Saint  of  these  later  times,  is  due  the  glory 
of  having  made  the  Sacrament  of  Penance 
sweet  to  Penitents.  He  was  wont  to  say, 
against  the  rigorism  of  those  who  made  the 
way  of  absolution  difficult,  u  0,  poor  Blood 


IV 

of  Jesus  Christ !"  and  these  great  words 
contain  a  whole  treatise  of  theology.  They 
are  a  warning  to  the  Priest  to  be  generous 
of  that  which  was  given  to  the  last  drop  so 
freely  for  our  salvation,  and  to  the  Penitent 
to  be  generous  in  the  use  of  the  liberty 
which  that  most  Precious  Blood  has  pur- 
chased for  us. 

It  was  on  one  of  those  peaceful  Feasts  of 
Saint  Alphonsus,  in  your  church  and  gar- 
den at  St.  Mary's,  that  the  outline  of  the 
following  thoughts  came  upon  me  with  a 
new  distinctness,  and  what  I  then  said 
briefly  at  your  bidding,  I  have  here  endea- 
voured to  enlarge.  But  adequately  to  re- 
present the  Sacrament  of  Penance  as  an 
object  of  love,  would  need  not  only  more 
than  all  I  have  written,  but  more  than  all  I 
could  write.  Nevertheless,  such  as  it  is,  ac- 
cept it  as  a  token  of  love  to  your  Patron 
and  to  yourself,  and  pray  that  our  dear 


Lord,  who  with  clay  can  open  the  eyes  of 
the  blind,  may  use  it  for  the  light  and  heal- 
ing of  at  least  one  soul.  Commending 
myself  to  your  prayers  and  to  the  interces- 
sion of  Saint  Alphonsus, 

Believe  me, 

My  dear  Father  Coffin, 
Always  affectionately  yours, 

HENEY  E.  MANNING. 
KOME,  Holy  Week,  1862. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAOB 
THE  SACRAMENT  OF  PENANCE  THE  SPECIAL  SACRAMENT 

OF  THE  COMPASSION  OF  JESUS,         ....         9 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE     SACRAMENT     OF     PENANCE     A     MEANS     OF    SELF- 
KNOWLEDGE,  .  .  .31 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  SACRAMENT  OF  PENANCE  THE  MEANS  OF  PERFECTING 

OUR  CONTRITION, 51 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    SACRAMENT     OF    PENANCE     THE     SACRAMENT     OF 

REPARATION, 75 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE     SACRAMENT     OF     PENANCE    THE     SACRAMENT     OF 

PERSEVERANCE, 97 


THE 

LOVE    OF    JESUS 

TO  PENITENTS. 
CHAPTER  I. 

THE  SACRAMENT  OF  PENANCE  THE    SPECIAL 
SACRAMENT  OF  THE  COMPASSION  OF  JESUS. 

MY  object  in  the  following  pages  is  to  speak 
of  the  Sacrament  of  Penance,  not  so  much 
as  it  is  divinely  proposed  to  us  through  the 
Church  as  an  object  of  our  Faith,  but  as  it 
is,  an  object  of  our  love.  I  may,  therefore, 
pass  over  as  already  known  its  Divine  in- 
stitution, its  form,  its  matter,  and  its 
effects,  to  use  the  language  of  our  Theology, 
and  speak  of  it  as  it  manifests  to  us  the 
special  tenderness  of  the  love  of  Jesus,  and 
draws  us  to  itself  by  the  effusion  of  special 
gifts  of  grace.  The  Sacrament  of  Penance 


10  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT   OF 

is  loved  by  Catholics,  and  hated  by  the 
world.  Like  the  Pillar,  which  of  old  guided 
the  people  of  God,  to  us  it  is  all  light ;  to 
the  world  it  is  all  darkness.  There  are  two 
things  of  which  the  world  would  fain  rid 
itself — of  the  day  of  Judgment  and  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance  :  of  the  former,  be- 
cause it  is  searching  and  inevitable  ;  of  the 
latter,  because  it  is  the  anticipation  and  the 
witness  of  judgment  to  come.  For  this 
cause  there  is  no  evil  that  the  world  will 
not  say  of  the  Confessional.  It  would 
dethrone  the  Eternal  Judge  if  it  could, 
therefore  it  spurns  at  the  judge  who  sits  in 
the  tribunal  of  Penance,  because  he  is 
within  the  reach  of  its  heel.  And  not  only 
the  world  without  the  Church,  but  the 
world  within  its  unity,  the  impure,  the 
false,  the  proud,  the  lukewarm,  the  worldly 
Catholic,  and  in  a  word,  all  who  are  impe- 
nitent, both  fear  and  shrink  from  the  shadow 
of  the  Great  White  Throne  which  falls  upon 
them  from  the  Sacrament  of  Penance.  But 
to  all  who  are  penitent,  in  whatsoever  degree 
and  of  whatsoever  character,  it  is  an  object 


THE   COMPASSION   OF   JESUS.  11 

of  love  next  after  the  Holy  Eucharist,  and 
for  reasons  which  even  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment of  the  Altar  does  not  equally  present. 
The  presence  of  Jesus  in  the  Holy  Eucharist 
is  real  and  substantial,  proper  and  personal, 
in  all  the  fulness  of  His  Godhead  and  Man- 
hood. His  presence  in  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  is  by  representation  and  by  grace. 
In  this  then  there  is  no  comparison  possible. 
In  the  Holy  Eucharist  Jesus  manifests  Him- 
self in  His  royalty,  power,  arid  glory.  In 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance,  in  His  tenderness 
as  a  Physician,  and  His  compassion  as  the 
Good  Shepherd.  In  the  former  He  attracts 
and  transforms  us  chiefly  by  His  divine 
attributes  ;  in  the  latter  by  His  human 
experience,  sympathy,  and  pity.  In  the 
Holy  Eucharist  Jesus  draws  us  upwards  to 
Himself;  in  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  He 
stoops  down  to  listen  to  us,  and  to  open  to 
us  His  Sacred  Heart,  in  the  midst  of  our 
sins  and  in  the  hour  of  our  greatest  miseries. 
The  Holy  Eucharist  is  Jesus  reigning 
amongst  the  just;  the  Sacrament  of  Pe- 
nance is  Jesus  seeking  among  sinners  for 


12  PEXANCE   THE    SACRAMENT    OF 

those  that  are  lost ;  the  former  is  the  Sacra- 
ment of  Saints,  the  latter,  of  the  sinful ; 
and  therefore  to  such  as  we  are  it  comes 
down  with  a  singular  nearness,  an  intimate 
contact  with  our  needs,  and  an  articulate 
and  human  voice  of  help  and  solace. 
What,  then,  I  would  wish  to  do  is  to  set 
down  some  of  the  reasons  why  we  ought 
to  contemplate  and  to  approach  it  with 
love.  The  reasons  I  will  give  shall  be  as 
follows  : — 

Because,  first,  it  is  the  special  Sacrament 
of  the  Compassion  of  Jesus  ;  secondly,  it  is 
the  means  of  self-knowledge  ;  thirdly,  of 
perfect  contrition  ;  fourthly,  of  reparation ; 
and  lastly,  of  perseverance. 

1.  And  first,  I  would  show  that  it  is  the 
special  Sacrament  of  the  Compassion  of 
Jesus.  The  Sacrament  of  Penance  then 
both  manifests  and  applies  the  fulness  of 
the  grace  of  Jesus  to  sinners.  When  our 
Divine  Lord  breathed  upon  the  Apostles 
and  said,  "  Receive  ye  the  Holy  Ghost ; 
whose  sins  you  shall  forgive  they  are 
forgiven,  and  whose  sins  you  shall  retain 


THE   COMPASSION    OF  JESUS.  13 

they  are  retained,"*  He  exempted  no  soul 
then  living,  nor  any  who  should  afterwards 
come  into  the  world,  from  this  divine 
commission  of  pardon.  He  placed  in  the 
hands  of  His  Apostles  the  gift  of  His  Most 
Precious  Blood,  wherewith  to  sprinkle  the 
whole  earth  and  the  people  of  all  ages  and 
generations.  It  was  a  commission  to  Jew 
and  Gentile,  to  those  who  then  believed, 
and  to  all  who  through  their  word  should 
afterwards  believe  in  His  name.  It  included 
also  the  greatest  of  sinners.  No  man  was 
shut  out  from  the  great  mission  of  penance 
and  of  pardon.  The  oldest  and  most  inve- 
terate sinner,  whose  sin  was  red  as  scarlet 
and  black  as  the  night,  the  most  proudly  im- 
pious, and  the  most  habitual  in  relapse,  all 
are  within  the  terms  and  reach  of  absolu- 
tion. He  has  Himself  said,  "  Every  sin  and 
blasphemy  shall  be  forgiven  men  save  only 
one,  the  blasphemy  of  the  Spirit  shall  not 
be  forgiven,*  because  the  blasphemy  of  the 
Spirit  is  essentially  a  sin  that  is  not  re- 
pented of.  It  consists  in  blaspheming  and 

*  St.  John,  xx.  22,  23.  t  St.  Matth.  xii.  31. 


14  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT   OF 

rejecting  the  Lord  of  repentance  and  the 
very  commission  of  forgiveness.  It  becomes 
unpardonable,  not  by  a  decree  of  the  Divine 
legislation,  but  by  the  moral  bar  put  by  the 
sinner  himself.  This  alone  excepted,  there 
is  no  sin  of  the  flesh  or  spirit,  howsoever 
inveterate,  guilty,  or  aggravated,  for  which 
there  is  not  a  full,  a  perfect,  and  instant 
absolution. 

But  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  not  only 
conveys  pardon  to  all  and  for  all  sins  what- 
soever,  it  also  bestows  upon  the  soul  an 
exuberance  of  divine  gifts.  As  Baptism  is 
our  first  spiritual  resurrection,  so,  if  we 
afterwards  fall  into  mortal  sin,  Penance  is 
our  second.  And  therefore  they  are  called 
the  Sacraments  of  the  dead,  because  they 
raise  souls  dead  in  sin  to  the  life  of  justice, 
and  in  raising  the  soul  they  fill  it  with 
grace  and  charity.  The  sanctifying  grace 
lost  after  Baptism  is  restored  in  Penance, 
and  not  only  so,  but  all  the  works  of  piety 
and  charity,  which  through  our  mortal  sins 
are  mortified  and  die,  by  absolution  are 
fully  revived  and  live  again  before  God. 


THE   COMPASSION"   OF   JESUS.  15 

Like  as  spring  comes  after  winter  and 
revives  all  things,  and  the  lands  and  the 
woods,  which  a  little  while  ago  seemed  dead, 
put  on  a  new  vigour  and  fruitfulness,  so 
with  the  soul.  It  was  dead,  it  is  alive 
again,  and  all  the  fruits  which  hung 
withered  on  the  bough  are  quickened  once 
more  with  a  new  life.  By  Baptism  we  were 
sons  of  God,  by  sin  we  lost  our  adoption 
and  fell  from  grace  and  charity ;  by  Penance 
we  are  brought  back  again  to  Friendship 
and  Sonship  with  our  Father  in  Heaven. 
Such  is  the  fulness  of  grace  of  which  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance  is  a  permanent  and 
inexhaustible  source. 

2.  Another  way  in  which  the  Sacrament 
of  Penance  manifests  the  compassion  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  its  freeness.  This  full, 
perfect,  and  universal  absolution  from  all 
sins  of  our  whole  life,  in  all  their  multitude 
and  in  all  their  guilt,  would  be  cheaply  pur- 
chased by  years  of  sorrow,  or  by  a  life  of 
penance,  or  by  loss  of  life  itself.  Who  is 
there  that  would  not  do,  or  suffer,  or  sacri- 
fice anything,  or  even  die,  if  by  dying  he 


16  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT   OF 

could  make  sure  of  an  eternal  pardon  ? 
Nevertheless  it  is  for  none  of  these  condi- 
tions that  our  Divine  Lord  bestows  His  for- 
giveness on  us.  We  could  not  purchase  it, 
therefore  He  purchased  it  for  us.  We  were 
"  sold  gratis,"  that  is,  betrayed  and  lost  by 
sin,  and  we  are  "redeemed  without  money/'* 
that  is,  as  we  had  not  wherewith  to  pay  He 
let  us  go  and  forgave  us  the  debt,t  and  yet 
not  till  He  had  paid  it  Himself.  Accord- 
ing to  the  way  of  wisdom  and  love,  ordained 
by  the  Father,  the  Son  of  God  was  incar- 
nate, that  He  might  take  a  human  life,  and 
that  having  taken  it  He  might  have  some- 
what to  lay  down  for  us.  "  No  man  taketh 
it  away  from  me :  I  have  power  to  lay  it 
down  and  I  have  power  to  take  it  up 
again."t  By  the  passion  of  His  whole 
mortal  life,  and  above  all,  by  the  last  act  of 
shedding  for  us  His  Most  Precious  Blood, 
Jesus  purchased  for  us  the  absolution  of 
Baptism  and  of  Penance.  It  cost  Him  dear 
to  institute  those  holy  Sacraments.  It  cost 

*  Isaias,  Hi.  3.  f  St.  Matth.  xviii.  25,  27. 

J  St.  John,  x.  18. 


THE   COMPASSION   OF   JESUS.  17 

us  nothing,  for  He  has  freely  given  them  to 
us.  They  are  ours  because  they  are  His, 
and  they  are  His  because  He  purchased 
them  by  the  last  drop  of  His  Divine  Blood. 
By  an  act  of  sovereign. largesse  He  bestows 
them  upon  us.  Every  several  absolution  is 
a  Eoyal  pardon,  freely  and  abundantly  be- 
stowed, not  only  "  without  money  and 
without  any  price,"*  but  notwithstanding 
our  great  un worthiness. 

And  even  more  than  this.  That  we  may 
be  forgiven  He  requires  of  us  at  least  a 
penitent  heart ;  and  yet  this  penitent  heart 
is  also  His  gift.  It  is  by  His  own  prevent- 
ing grace  that  we  are  disposed  for  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance.  It  is  He  who 
awakens  supernatural  fear  by  the  light  of 
Faith  in  the  reason.  It  is  He  who  stings 
the  conscience  with  "  the  spirit  of  burning" 
and  the  consciousness  of  past  sin.  It  is  He 
who  awakens  the  hopes  of  our  Heavenly 
Father's  pardon,  and  gives  to  the  will  the 
impulse  which  moves  it  to  the  Confessional. 
"No  man  cometh  to  the  Father  but  by 

*  Isaias,  Iv.  1. 


18     PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT  OF 

me;"*  u  and  no  man  can  come  to  me  except 
the  Father  who  hath  sent  me  draw  him." 
The  Sacrament  of  Penance  then  is  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Sovereign  Grace  of  Jesus, 
and  the  especial  channel  and  witness  of 
His  compassion,  and  round  about  the  tribu- 
nal where  He  sits  in  His  royal  clemency  the 
attraction  of  His  secret  inspiration  is  always 
moving  to  and  fro  to  win  souls  to  come  to 
Him.  Such  is  the  freeness  with  which  He 
bestows  on  men  the  dear-bought  pardon  of 
His  Most  Precious  Blood. 

3.  Once  more  the  compassion  of  Jesus 
shows  itself  in  the  Sacrament  of  Penance 
by  the  inexhaustible  frequency  with  which 
He  bestows  upon  us  absolution  after  abso- 
lution. The  angels  sinned  once  and  fell. 
They  had  no  Redemption,  no  Redeemer  ; 
once  fallen,  fallen  to  all  eternity.  Adam 
sinned  once,  and  fell  from  life  and  sonship. 
He  had  then  no  Sacrament  of  Penance,  no 
Baptism  of  regeneration.  But  when  sin 
entered  Redemption  came  with  it.  And 
grace  brought  in  a  dispensation  of  forgive- 

*St.  John,  xiv.  6. 


THE   COMPASSION   OF   JESUS.  19 

ness :  first  came  the  virtue  of  penance  as 
the  condition  of  pardon.  Now  it  is  embo- 
died in  a  Sacrament.  "  Not  as  it  was  by 
one  sin,  so  also  is  the  gift.  For  judgment 
indeed  was  by  one  unto  condemnation,  but 
grace  is  of  many  offences  unto  justification. 
For  if  by  one  man's  offence  death  reigned 
through  one,  much  more  they  who  receive 
abundance  of  grace  out  of  the  gift,  and  of 
justice,  shall  reign  in  life  through  one  Jesus 
Christ."*  Adam's  one  sin  brought  death 
even  on  those  who  had  not  sinned.  The 
Precious  Blood  of  Jesus  has  brought  abso- 
lution upon  all  men,  and  for  all  sins  count- 
less as  the  stars  of  Heaven.  There  is  but 
one  Baptism,  but  there  are  many  absolu- 
tions, for  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  is  a 
fountain  ever-flowing,  perennial,  and  inex- 
haustible. The  silver  trumpets  proclaimed 
the  jubilee  once  only  in  every  fifty  years, 
but  the  Precious  Blood  cries  to  us  in  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance  at  all  hours,  by  day 
and  by  night.  The  pool  of  Bethsaida  in 
Jerusalem  had  no  healing  virtue  save  only 

*  £ora.  v.  16,  17. 


20     PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT  OF 

after  its  waters  had  been  stirred  by  the  visit 
of  an  Angel,  and  then  they  healed  but  one 
sick  man :  the  first  alone  who  could  go 
down  into  them.  Its  porches  were  filled 
with  sufferers  languishing  with  sickness  and 
hope  deferred.  Again  and  again  for  years 
the  gift  had  been  snatched  from  them  even 
at  the  moment  of  arriving ;  while  they  were 
even  going  down  into  the  waters,  another 
less  maimed,  and  less  in  need  than  they 
were,  went  down  into  the  waters  before 
them  and  carried  away  the  grace.  To  try 
their  faith  and  patience  God  hardly  opened 
His  hand,  and  let  His  power  fall  only  by 
single  drops  upon  the  surface  of  the  pool. 
Wonderful  illustration  and  contrast  !  The 
fountain  opened  in  the  heavenly  Jerusalem 
for  the  sin  of  man  is  open  day  and  night ; 
always  full  of  power  and  grace.  Jesus 
Himself  is  there  the  Lord  of  all  Power. 
Healing  and  virtue  go  out  from  Him  with 
a  divine  and  inexhaustible  fulness.  It  is 
not  the  first,  or  one  alone  that  is  healed,  but 
all  comers  and  all  sufferers  from  all  lands 
and  at  all  hours,  and  no  man  takes  away 


THE   COMPASSION    OF    JESUS.  21 

another's  absolution,  nor  does  any  one  need 
another's  hand  to  help  him  to  go  down  into 
the  pool  of  the  Most  Precious  Blood.  God 
the  Holy  Ghost  is  there  drawing,  sustain- 
ing, upholding  the  weak  and  maimed,  as 
they  go  down  and  are  healed  one  by  one. 
And  that  not  once  only,  but  seventy  times 
seven  ;  as  often  as  men  fall,  so  often  they 
may  return,  and  the  same  Precious  Blood 
cleanses  and  heals  always  as  for  the  first 
time,  with  a  divine  and  perfect  absolution. 
Jesus  makes  no  distinction.  All  who  come 
with  the  necessary  dispositions  of  heart  are 
healed.  For  all  sins  whatsoever,  sins  after 
repentance,  sins  after  absolution,  sins  after 
a  long  life  of  devotion,  sins  in  the  full  sun- 
shine of  His  love,  there  is  but  one  condition 
— sorrow  and  the  will  to  sin  no  more,  and 
where  this  is,  absolution  is  sure  and  full. 

4.  And  here  again  His  compassion  is 
almost  more  luminously  shown,  that  is,  in 
the  facility  of  that  which  He  requires  of  us 
as  a  condition  to  His  absolute  pardon.  It 
is  in  His  sovereign  gift,  and  yet  riot  without 
condition.  But  this  condition  He  has 


22  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT   OF 

reduced  to  the  least  He  could  require. 
Saint  Augustine  says,  "  God  created  us 
without  our  co-operation,  but  He  will  not 
justify  us  without  it."  In  our  creation  we 
were  passive  and  unconscious,  in  our  justifi- 
cation we  must  be  conscious  and  active.  If 
it  were  not  so,  we  should  not  be  moral 
agents,  nor  would  our  salvation  be  by  moral 
means.  Though,  as  I  have  said,  He  might 
have  exacted  the  most  that  man  can  do  as 
a  condition  of  eternal  life,  He  requires  the 
least  which  His  moral  law  exacts.  In  Bap- 
tism He  pours  out  upon  us  all  His  gifts  of 
regeneration,  sonship,  justification,  sancti- 
fying grace,  and  charity,  while  we  are  as  yet 
unconscious.  Compared  with  this,  indeed, 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance  is  more  exacting, 
and  it  was  therefore  called  by  the  Holy 
Fathers  "  Baptismus  laboriosus,"  a  toilsome 
Baptism,  and  "  post  naufragium  tabula,"  a 
plank  after  shipwreck,  to  show  that  it  was 
the  last  hope  to  the  lost.  Nevertheless,  in 
itself  it  is  a  miracle  of  the  facility  of  Jesus 
in  forgiving  sinners. 

And  first,  all  that  He  demands  of  us  is  to 


THE   COMPASSION    OF   JESDS.  23 

come  to  the  Sacrament  of  Penance.  He 
sits  all  day  long  in  the  Confessional,  say- 
ing,* "  Come  to  me  all  you  that  labour 
and  are  burdened,  and  I  will  refresh 
you."  He  upbraids  us  for  our  unwilling- 
ness, "  You  will  not  come  to  me  that  you 
may  have  life."t  "  All  the  day  long  have 
I  spread  my  hands  to  a  people  that  believeth 
not  and  contradicteth  me."f  He  pleads 
with  us  as  if  we  did  Him  wrong  in  destroy- 
ing ourselves.  "  Oh,  my  people,  what  have 
I  done  to  thee,  or  in  what  have  I  molested 
thee,  answer  thou  me  ?"§  "  Then  come  and 
accuse  me,"  saith  the  Lord.  "  If  your  sins 
be  as  scarlet  they  shall  be  made  white  as 
snow,  if  they  be  red  as  crimson  they  shall 
be  white  as  wool. "II  Less  than  this  He  could 
not  require.  At  least  we  must  come  to 
Him  in  the  Sacrament  of  His  compassion, 
that  our  sins  may  be  forgiven.  But  I  have 
already  shown  that  even  the  disposition  and 
the  desire  to  come  to  Him  spring  from  the 

*  St.  Matth.  xi.  28.  t  St.  John,  v.  40. 

t  Eom.  x.  21.  §  Mich.  vi.  3. 

II  Is.  i.  18. 


24     TEXANCE  THE  SACRAMENT  OF 

inspiration  of  His  own  preventing  grace,  by 
which  He  is  at  all  days  and  all  hours  draw- 
ing souls  to  Himself.  He  requires  then  that 
we  should  come  to  Him,  and  that  we  should 
bring  with  us  at  least  a  sorrow  for  our  sins. 
It  would  be  a  great  insincerity  and  an  im- 
moral act  to  come  to  Him  without  sorrow 
for  having  offended  against  Him.  This,  at 
least,  we  owe  to  Him.  If  we  can  do  no 
more,  we  can  at  least  be  sorry.  And  yet  in 
sorrow  there  are  many  degrees  so  marked, 
that  I  might  almost  say  there  are  many 
kinds,  reaching  from  the  sorrow  of  fear  to 
the  sorrow  of  love,  from  the  sorrow  which 
springs  from  a  fear  of  judgment  to  come  to 
the  sorrow  which  flows  from  the  love  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  He  might  justly 
require  of  us  the  sorrow  of  love,  but  He 
requires  of  us  only  the  sorrow  of  holy  fear, 
that  is  from  any  supernatural  motive  of 
faith,  such  as  of  the  judgment  to  come,  and 
of  eternal  death,  with  a  desire  of  being  re- 
conciled to  Him.  And  yet  this  sorrow  is 
not  the  sorrow  of  emotion  and  tears,  but  the 
sorrow  of  the  reason  and  the  will,  that  is  a 


THE   COMPASSION   OF   JESUS.  25 

displeasure  against  our  sins  and  against 
ourselves,  with  a  will  to  sin  no  more.  Un- 
less we  have  this  we  should  be  unfit  for 
absolution,  for  a  will  to  sin  is  sin.  A  will 
not  to  sin  is  the  least  amends  we  can  make, 
and  this  is  no  more  than  the  retracting  of 
the  disobedient  will  whereby  we  have 
offended,  and  a  returning  to  our  obedience 
as  children  of  God.  Together  with  this 
sorrow  He  requires  also  a  truthful  and 
humble  confession,  a  sincere  self-accusation 
in  the  tribunal  of  penance,  detailing  at  least 
the  sins  we  remember,  their  kind,  their 
number.  To  this  must  be  joined  a  resolution 
to  sin  no  more.  Such  is  the  state  of  heart 
He  requires  of  us.  With  this  even  the 
greatest  of  sinners,  with  all  the  leprosy  of 
his  sin  upon  him,  may  come  to  the  Sacra- 
ment of  Penance,  and  be  cleansed  every 
whit.  The  prodigal  son,  after  all  his  wan- 
tonness and  all  his  wanderings,  with  all  his 
ingratitude,  and  with  the  multitude  of  his 
sins  upon  him,  beggared  and  barefoot,  may 
return  to  his  Heavenly  Father  with  no  more 
than  a  "  Father,  I  have  sinned  against 

c 


26  PENANGE   THE   SACRAMENT   OF 

Heaven,""  and  he  is  at  once  forgiven.  This 
is  the  true  facility  of  the  pardon  of  Jesus 
Christ,  not  the  false  and  delusive  heresy  of 
justification  by  faith  alone,  which  the  inno- 
vators of  these  later  ages  have  invented, 
but  the  full,  free,  and  sovereign  pardon,  with 
which  every  penitent  soul  is  received  and 
justified  in  the  Sacrament  of  the  Compassion 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

5.  There  is  still  one  more  token  of  His 
compassion  in  this  Sacrament  of  Pardon, 
and  it  is  the  fervent  desire  with  which  He 
desires  to  absolve  us  of  our  sins.  He  loves 
every  several  soul  with  all  the  love  of  His 
Sacred  Heart,  and  His  whole  Heart  is  bent 
at  every  moment  on  the  salvation  of  those 
that  are  lost.  He  has  told  us  that  even  the 
ninety  and  nine  just  are  less  present  to  His 
loving  anxiety,  to  speak  as  He  has  taught 
us  in  the  parable  of  the  lost  sheep,  than  the 
one  sinner  doing  penance.  He  seeks  out 
such  a  soul  by  His  preventing  grace.  He 
surrounds,  encompasses,  envelopes  it  with 
lights,  inspirations,  impulses,  attractions  of 

*  St.  Luke,  xv.  21. 


THE    COMPASSION    OF   JESUS.  27 

His  love  and  power.  Even  when  we  are 
unwilling  to  come  to  Him,  He  is  yearning 
to  draw  us  to  Himself.  We  are  distant, 
and  He  presses  after  us ;  we  are  unwilling, 
and  He  is  urgent  by  His  grace.  We  are 
cold,  and  He  is  on  fire  with  the  love  of  souls. 
We  are  tardy  in  listening,  and  tardier  in 
coming  to  Him,  and  He  is  ardent  and  im- 
portunate in  the  reiteration  of  His  calls  and 
inspirations.  For  He  desires  to  forgive  us 
more  than  we  desire  to  be  forgiven.  He 
loves  us  even  more  than  we  love  ourselves. 
He  thirsts  for  our  salvation  more  than  we 
desire  to  be  saved  ;  and  it  is  in  and  through 
and  by  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  that  He 
unfolds  to  us  the  full  tenderness  and  com- 
passion of  His  Sacred  Heart  in  the  midst  of 
our  miseries  and  our  sins. 

Such,  then,  are  some  of  the  reasons  why 
this  Sacrament  ought  to  be  an  object  of  our 
love.  It  is  because  Jesus  is  with  us  as  He 
was  with  Magdalen  when  she  stood  behind 
Him  weeping,  and  with  Peter  after  he  had 
denied  Him  thrice.  In  it  He  again  receives 
us  to  His  grace  and  love,  and  through  it 


28     PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT  OF 

He  guides,  sustains,  and  consoles  the  peni- 
tent, the  fearful,  and  the  tempted.  It  is 
the  Sacrament  of  the  Presence  and  the  love 
of  the  Good  Shepherd,  and  by  it  all  that  is 
expressed  in  that  title  of  tenderness  and 
compassion  is  fulfilled  to  us.  "  I  am  come 
that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it 
more  abundantly,"*  that  is,  with  all  fulness 
and  freeness  and  facility,  again  and  again 
as  often  as  they  need,  and  with  all  the 
fervour  and  generosity  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

And  now  this  Sacrament  of  His  love  to 
many  is  necessary,  and  to  all  is  a  fountain 
of  grace. 

To  those  who  after  Baptism  have  fallen 
into  mortal  sin,  it  is  of  necessity.  No  other 
Sacrament  of  life  remains  to  them.  No 
other  means  of  rising  from  the  death  of  sin 
to  the  life  of  justice  is  ordained.  They 
cannot  raise  themselves  to  life  again.  The 
charity  of  God  has  departed  from  them,  and 
the  Holy  Ghost  has  withdrawn  His  habi- 
tual grace.  The  interior  acts  of  their  souls 
are  dead.  Their  good  actions  have  no 

*  St,  John,  x.  10. 


TBE   COMPASSION   OF   JESUS.  29 

power  of  merit.  One  act  of  mortal  sin  has 
destroyed  all.  One  such  sin  in  youth  has 
cankered  the  root  of  a  long  life,  or  one  such 
sin  at  the  close  of  many  years  has  withered 
all  the  growth  and  fruit  of  the  longest 
obedience.  If  they  so  die,  they  are  lost,  and 
lost  for  ever.  To  die  out  of  the  love  of 
God  is  eternal  death.  How  shall  they  be 
revived  again,  except  only  by  this  second 
Sacrament  of  the  dead  ?  If  they  come  with 
the  sorrow  of  faith  and  hope,  even  though 
they  have  not  charity,  the  compassion  of  Jesus 
will  give  them  a  full  forgiveness,  and  breathe 
into  them  the  breath  of  life  once  more. 

And  lastly  to  all,  even  to  the  holiest,  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance  is  a  fountain  of 
grace.  For  it  is  hard  to  know  ourselves,  and 
it  perfects  us  in  self-knowledge  ;  it  is  hard 
to  be  generous  in  our  sorrow,  and  it  perfects 
our  contrition  ;  it  is  hard  to  be  fervent,  arid 
it  gives  us  the  spirit  of  mortification  and 
courage.  It  is  hard  to  be  steadfast  and 
persevering,  and  it  sustains  and  keeps  us 
up  as  by  the  power  of  the  everlasting  arms. 
But  of  this  I  shall  have  to  speak  hereafter. 


30        THE   SACRAMENT    OF   COMPASSION. 

They  who  habitually  frequent  this  holy 
Sacrament  live  in  a  sweet  bondage  of  love, 
which  is  perfect  freedom,  with  a  will  elevated 
and  confirmed  in  the  liberty  of  the  children 
of  God.  They  who  spurn  and  neglect  it, 
seek  for  liberty,  and  fall  into  a  bondage 
which  is  heavy  and  bitter.  The  sins  of  the 
heart  and  the  sins  of  the  tongue,  the  temp- 
tations of  the  devil,  the  yoke  of  the  world, 
scruples  and  stings  of  conscience,  fear  of 
death  and  terrors  of  judgment  to  come, 
these  are  the  wages  of  those  who  refuse  the 
light  burden  and  the  sweet  yoke  of  Jesus  in 
this  Sacrament  of  His  Compassion. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  SACRAMENT  OF  PENANCE  A  MEANS  OF 
SELF-  KNOW  LEDGE. 

I  HAVE  hitherto  shown  that  the  Sacrament 
of  Penance  is  the  special  manifestation  of 
the  compassion  of  Jesus.  As  the  Church 
is  the  manifestation  of  His  Truth  to  every 
age,  so  Penance  is  the  manifestation  of 
His  tenderness.  St.  Cyprian  calls  the 
Church  "  Sacramentum  unitatis...et  Veri- 
tatis,"*  "The  Sacrament  of  Unity  and 
Truth ;"  because  by  the  supernatural 
Unity  of  the  Church  the  Truth  is  incorpo- 
rated, perpetuated,  and  promulgated  to  the 
world.  So  St.  Optatus  says,  "  Claves  non 
habent  hseretici  quas  solus  Petrus  accepit,"f 
"The  heretics  have  not  the  keys,  which 
Peter  alone  received  ;"  and  St.  Augustine, 

*  St.  Cypr.  Epist.  ad  Jul.,  Ixxiii. 
t  St.  Optat.  Lib.  i.  c.  10. 


32  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

"Unitas  tenet,  unitas  dimittit,"*  "  Unity 
binds,  unity  looses,"  that  is,  in  the  unity  of 
the  Church  alone  the  power  of  loosing  from 
sin  is  found.  Because  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  is  the  only  revealed  channel  of  the 
pardon  of  Jesus  Christ  to  those  who  fall 
from  baptismal  grace.  Our  Lord,  in  warn- 
ing the  Church  of  Laodicea,  said,  "  Because 
thou  sayest  I  am  rich  and  made  wealthy, 
and  have  need  of  nothing;  and  knowest 
not,  that  thou  art  wretched,  and  miserable, 
and  poor,  and  blind,  and  naked."!  They 
were  lukewarm  and  therefore  they  were 
self-deceived,  and  because  they  were  self- 
deceived  they  were  self-trusting.  They  be- 
lieved themselves  to  be  possessed  of  light, 
and  faith,  and  grace,  and  knowledge  of 
themselves,  and  they  knew  not  their  poverty 
and  blindness.  Our  Lord  invites  and  warns 
them  to  come  to  Him  for  gold  and  white 
raiment,  and  eye-salve,  that  is,  for  sancti- 
fying grace  and  justification  and  knowledge 
of  themselves.  And  this  He  bestows  upon 

*  St.  Aug.  De  Bapt.  cont.  Donat.  Lib.  i.  c.  18. 
f  Apoc.  iii.  17. 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  33 

those  who  are  fallen  from  their  baptismal 
innocence  in  the  Sacrament  of  Penance. 

My  present  purpose,  then,  is  to  show  how 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance  is  the  means  of 
self-knowledge. 

1.  And  first,  because  it  requires  and  sus- 
tains the  habit  of  self-examination.  Once 
a  year,  at  least,  every  soul  must  examine 
its  state  before  God  under  pain  of  sin. 
Frequent  confession  requires  frequent  self- 
examination.  Daily  self-examination  is  the 
daily  preparation  for  confession,  which  is 
the  fruit  and  result  of  daily  self-examination. 
In  this  way  we  are  bound  by  a  strong  and 
constraining  obligation  to  a  duty  which  is 
necessary  to  salvation,  but  both  unpleasant 
and  difficult.  It  is  absolutely  necessary,  by 
the  necessity  of  a  means  without  which 
there  can  be  no  salvation,  for  without 
repentance  salvation  is  impossible,  and 
without  self-knowledge  repentance  is  impos- 
sible. There  can  be  no  sorrow  or  detesta- 
tion of  sins  which  we  know  not,  nor  of  acts 
which  we  do  not  know  to  be  sins.  And 
yet,  this  is  an  ignorance  which  will  not 


34  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

excuse  us.  It  is  vincible,  and  therefore  cul- 
pable. Again,  if  we  forget  our  sins  God  does 
not  forget  them.  The  sins  of  childhood  and 
youth  and  of  long  years  past  we  may  re- 
member no  more,  but  they  are  written  in 
the  book  of  God's  remembrance.  All  our 
whole  life,  so  tangled  and  confused,  ille- 
gible and  dark  to  our  eyes,  is  all  clear  and 
distinct  to  His.  It  is  a  dangerous  thing  to 
forget  our  past.  We  cannot  cast  it  off 
except  by  Penance.  Though  we  forget  it 
we  can  never  escape  from  its  presence.  It 
follows  as  a  shadow,  noiseless  but  insepara- 
ble. "  Some  men's  sins  are  manifest,  going 
before  to  judgment ;  and  some  men  they  fol- 
low after."*  There  is  but  one  way  to  be 
loosed  from  them,  and  that  by  the  power  of 
the  keys.  To  this,  confession  is  necessary, 
and  confession  without  self-knowledge  is  im- 
possible. 

But  self-examination  is  not  only  of  vital 
necessity,  it  is  also  a  painful  and  displeasing 
task.  There  are  two  things  which  we 
shrink  from  seeing  as  they  are,  God  and 

*  1  Tim.  v.  24. 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  35 

ourselves.  The  Sanctity  of  God  overwhelms 
and  terrifies  us.  The  sight  of  our  own  sins 
and  miseries  galls  and  humbles  us.  We 
have  not  the  courage  or  the  will  to  look 
steadily  on  either  of  these  things.  If  we 
catch  a  momentary  sight  of  them  we  turn 
away,  and  try  to  lose  ourselves  in  the  dis- 
tractions of  other  thoughts.  As  St.  James 
says,  "  If  a  man  be  a  hearer  of  the  word, 
and  not  a  doer  :  he  shall  be  compared  to  a 
man  beholding  his  own  countenance  in  a 
glass.  For  he  beheld  hiuiself  and  went  his 
way,  and  presently  forgot  what  manner  of 
man  he  was."* 

It  wounds  our  self-love  to  see  our  faults, 
the  sins  of  commission,  the  breaches  of  the 
ten  commandments,  the  sins  of  omission,  the 
neglects,  the  ingratitude,  the  meanness  of 
which  we  have  been  guilty.  It  requires  a 
great  sincerity  and  no  little  humility  to 
look  thoroughly  and  patiently  into  ourselves, 
and  to  learn  the  worst  of  our  hearts.  It 
disturbs  our  peace  and  breaks  our  self-com- 
placency. For  this  reason,  multitudes 

*  St.  James,  i.  23,  24. 


36  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

make  their  self-examination  hastily,  timidly, 
and  superficially. 

But  not  only  is  self-examination  dis- 
pleasing ;  it  is  also  very  difficult.  For  next 
after  God  nothing  is  more  inscrutable  than 
the  heart  which  is  made  in  His  own  like- 
ness. It  is  a  mystery  to  itself.  It  conceals 
itself  from  our  sight,  and  its  motions  become 
unconscious  like  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 
It  is  within  us,  and  it  is  therefore  invisible. 
It  is  insensible  because  it  is  habitual.  It  is 
a  perpetual  motion  so  rapid  that  it  seems 
like  rest.  The  thoughts  of  the  intelligence 
are  as  countless  as  the  stars  of  the  firma- 
ment, the  emotions  of  the  heart  are  as 
multitudinous  as  the  waves  of  the  sea.  The 
volitions  of  the  will  are  as  inconstant  and 
as  continual  as  the  changes  and  shifts  of  the 
wind.  "  The  heart  is  perverse  above  all 
things."*  It  is  a  deceiver,  a  flatterer,  a 
dreamer,  and  a  companion  of  the  Tempter. 
The  heart  is  a  deceiver  because  it  is  ever 
changing.  It  puts  on  a  new  colour  with  its 
outward  circumstances,  with  its  inward 

*  Jer.  xvii.  9. 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  37 

trials,  with  the  society  in  which  it  may  be. 
It  interweaves  its  motives  and  misnames  its 
actions.  The  fiery  persuade  themselves  that 
they  are  zealous,  the  censorious  that  they 
are  zealous  for  truth  and  justice,  the  slothful 
and  lax  that  they  are  benign.  It  fore- 
shortens its  ends,  so  that  the  ambitious 
believe  themselves  to  be  disinterested,  and 
the  worldly  to  be  single-eyed,  till  they  know 
not  for  what  end  they  are  acting,  and  while 
they  believe  themselves  to  have  only  one  aim 
in  sight,  they  have  another  below  the  hori- 
zon. But  more  than  this,  the  heart  is  a 
flatterer.  It  exaggerates  all  that  it  has  of 
good  :  such  as  its  prayers,  crosses,  alms, 
devotions,  graces,  much  more  its  intentions. 
It  excuses  all  evil.  It  throws  the  blame  of 
its  faults  upon  temptations,  upon  persons, 
upon  circumstances,  upon  everything  but 
upon  itself.  It  gilds  even  its  sins  by  soft 
names  and  high  professions  of  good  inten- 
tions and  services  rendered  to  God.  The 
heart  is  also  a  dreamer,  for  it  paints  itself 
by  the  imagination,  and  pictures  itself  to 
itself  as  a  penitent  in  sackcloth,  or  a  saint 


38  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

in  ecstasies.  It  reads  the  lives  of  saints, 
and  dreams  itself  in  their  place.  It  melts 
also  into  tears  and  is  moved  to  passionate 
emotions  before  a  crucifix  or  the  Blessed 
Sacrament,  like  as  others  shed  tears  over  a 
tale  of  imaginary  wrongs  or  of  majestic 
beauty.  It  puts  impulses  for  volitions, 
desires  for  intentions,  and  intentions  for 
deeds.  And,  last  of  all,  it  is  the  familiar 
and  playfellow  of  the  Tempter.  It  listens 
to  him  and  parleys  with  him  as  Achan  in 
Jericho.  It  courts  him  as  Balaam,  and  it 
houses  him  as  Judas  did.  Of  such  is  the 
heart  capable,  and  every  heart  has  the  whole 
capacity  of  all  this  self-deceit.  We  have 
need  of  a  firm  eye  and  an  unsparing  hand 
to  search  it  out ;  and  unless  we  be  sustained 
and  even  bound  to  this  painful  task,  few 
have  severity  enough  with  themselves  to  do 
it  as  they  ought.  It  is  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance,  then,  which  binds  us  to  this  duty, 
and  the  oftener  we  come  to  it  the  oftener  we 
are  compelled  to  search  out  the  secret  work- 
ing of  our  hearts  and  to  know  them  with  a 
true  knowledge. 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  39 

2.  Again,  it  places  us  in  the  light  of  the 
Cross.  The  reason  why  we  all  see  our  sin- 
fulness  so  little  is  because  we  so  little 
appreciate  the  Sanctity  of  God.  Our  lives 
seen  in  the  light  of  the  world,  or  of  our  own 
self-love,  or  of  our  flattering  friends,  are  very 
different  from  the  same  life  seen  in  the  light 
of  the  presence  of  God.  Thomas  a  Kempis 
says,  "  Sordet  in  conspectu  judicis,  quod 
fulget  in  conspectu  opeantis,"  "  What  looks 
bright  in  the  eyes  of  the  doer  looks  base  in 
the  sight  of  the  Judge."  When  Isaias  saw 
the  Lord  upon  His  throne  his  first  con- 
sciousness was  that  he  was  a  man  of  unclean 
lips.*  Daniel  fell  at  the  feet  of  the  angel 
of  the  Lord,  and  his  beauty  was  turned  into 
corruption.  St.  John,  when  in  vision  he 
saw  the  Lord,  on  whose  bosom  he  had  lain, 
fell  at  His  feet  as  dead.  It  was  the  light 
of  the  Divine  Presence  which  revealed  the 
sin  and  the  infirmity  of  even  such  Saints  as 
these.  Such  in  its  measure  is  the  effect  of 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance  upon  us.  We 
kneel  under  the  light  of  the  Ever-Blessed 

*  Is.  vi.  5. 


40  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Trinity,  and  of  the  Incarnate  Word,  and  of 
His  holy  Passion,  and  of  the  Divine  Soul  of 
Jesus,  which  in  its  agony  expiated  our  im- 
perfect contrition,  and  of  the  Sacred  Heart 
which  gives  out  its  illumination  by  the 
wound  in  the  side  of  Jesus.  All  these  lights 
come  down  upon  us  as  we  kneel  in  the  Con- 
fessional, and  in  them  we  see  not  only 
ourselves,  our  past  life,  our  present  character, 
but  the  law  of  God  which  we  have  broken, 
its  letter  and  its  spirit,  what  it  forbids,  what 
it  enjoins  upon  our  obedience,  our  fidelity, 
and  our  generosity.  And  by  this  clearer 
knowledge  of  the  rule  we  can  detect  our 
deviations  from  its  rectitude.  We  never 
see  ourselves  more  clearly  than  when  we 
kneel  under  the  crucifix  in  the  Sacra- 
ment of  Penance ;  and  the  oftener  we  kneel 
there,  the  clearer  grows  the  light  of  the 
knowledge  of  self  in  the  presence  of  God  and 
at  the  feet  of  Jesus  Christ. 

3.  And  further,  one  great  hindrance  to 
self-knowledge  is  the  spirit  of  self-defence. 
The  Pharisee,  who  stood  and  prayed  by 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  41 

*v 

himself,  thanking  God  that  he  was  not  as 
other  men  are,  is  the  type  of  those  who  turn 
from  the  Confessional.  The  Publican  is  the 
type  of  the  Penitent  upon  his  knees.  For 
what  is  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  but  the 
Sacrament  of  self-accusation  ?  We  are  all 
tempted  to  excuse  ourselves.  When  the 
eyes  and  ears  of  the  world  are  open  upon 
us,  we  are  all  full  of  apologies  or  denials. 
It  needs  the  heroic  humility  of  a  Saint  to 
suffer  and  be  silent ;  like  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul,  who,  when  falsely  accused  in  the  ante- 
chamber of  the  King  of  France,  went  down 
on  his  knees  and  took  the  shame  without  a 
word.  But  in  the  Confessional  we  can 
make  no  excuses.  We  know  that  all  is 
known  to  Him  who  sits  there  unseen  :  "  For 
the  word  of  God  is  living  and  effectual,  and 
more  piercing  than  any  two-edged  sword  ; 
and  reaching  unto  the  division  of  the  soul 
and  the  spirit,  of  the  joints  also,  and  the 
marrow,  and  is  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts 
and  intents  of  the  heart.  Neither  is  there 
any  creature  invisible  in  His  sight :  but  all 

D 


42  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

4 

things  are  naked  and  open  to  His  eyes,  to 
whom  our  speech  is."*  We  know  that  we 
can  suppress  nothing  ;  that  He  saw  all,  and 
heard  all,  and  knows  all  before  we  speak, 
and  that  He  puts  our  truth  on  trial,  in 
requiring  us  to  tell  out  our  whole  tale 
against  ourselves.  We  cannot  give  a  turn 
even  to  an  expression,  or  pass  over  a  single 
point,  for  He  knows  all  things.  Not  a  jot 
or  a  tittle  may  be  changed,  for  the  Divine 
scrutiny  searches  the  heart  at  the  time  of 
the  confession  as  well  as  at  the  time  of  the 
sin. 

4.  And  besides  this,  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  gives  us  the  guidance  of  another. 
We  know  well  that  no  man  can  trust  him- 
self to  be  judge  in  his  own  case.  With  all 
our  profession  of  sincerity  we  are  warped 
when  we  are  judging  of  ourselves.  We  are 
unconscious  of  our  words  and  acts.  We 
note  instantly  in  another  the  very  things  of 
which  we  are  not  aware  in  ourselves.  Nay, 
we  detect  the  least  impetuosity  in  others, 
and  fail  to  see  the  most  headstrong  passion 

*  Heb.  iv.  12,  13. 


OF   SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  43 

in  ourselves.  As  our  Divine  Lord  has  said, 
"  we  can  see  the  mote  in  our  brother's  eye, 
and  cannot  perceive  the  beam  which  is  in 
our  own  ;"*  and  therefore  He  has  ordained 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance,  in  which,  go 
when  we  may,  we  find  at  least  one  man  in 
the  world  who  is  a  true  friend  to  us — at 
least  one  friend  who  will  not  flatter  us. 

And  more,  the  Priest  in  the  Confessional 
is  not  only  an  impartial  judge,  but  also  a 
practised  one.  Like  as  a  physician,  who 
by  long  use  knows  all  the  symptoms  of 
disease,  who  can  tell  its  premonitory  signs, 
the  manifestations  of  its  presence,  and  the 
effects  which  it  leaves  behind  it :  so  is  the 
Priest,  who  is  divinely  ordained  to  sit  and 
judge  "  between  leprosy  and  leprosy,"  and 
to  discern  whether  it  be  only  rising,  or  in 
full  power,  or  departing.  A  physician  will 
often  discover  disease  where  no  one  suspects 
it,  and  by  signs  which  to  others  are  unper- 
ceived.  Not  only  the  beat  of  the  pulse  and 
the  colour  of  the  skin,  but  its  texture,  the 
light  of  the  eye,  the  harshness  of  the  hair, 

*  St.  Matth.  vii.  3. 


44  PENANCE  THE   SACRAMENT 

and  other  such  tokens,  give  evidence  of  the 
presence  of  disease.  In  like  manner,  in  the 
Confessional,  long  habit  of  dealing  with  the 
pathology  of  souls  enables  a  Confessor  at 
once  to  discover  symptoms  which  the  Peni- 
tent does  not  know  or  even  imagine. 

But  further,  he  is  not  only  practised,  and 
his  perceptions  quickened  by  experience  and 
use,  but  he  is  also  enlightened  to  discover 
even  that  which  the  Penitent  may  not  say 
or  know.  There  is  a  special  light  vouch- 
safed to  those  who  guide  souls.  They  are 
moved  often  to  say  more  than  they  are 
aware  of,  and  to  waken  up  whole  periods  of 
memory  and  trains  of  thought,  which  the 
Penitent  has  either  forgotten,  or  failed  to 
perceive.  Sometimes  a  question  suggests  a 
new  and  truer  estimate  of  actions  which 
have  been  altogether  misunderstood.  Some- 
times it  seems  like  an  intuition,  or  a  gift  of 
supernatural  insight,  as  indeed  it  is.  Some- 
times  perhaps  consciously,  often  unconsci- 
ously, like  men  that  work  in  mines,  before 
they  are  aware,  they  strike  through  into 
open  day,  and  find  themselves  all  of  a  sudden 


OF   SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  45 

in  the  light  of  the  sun.  The  Holy  Spirit 
makes  use  of  the  Confessor  to  illuminate  the 
Penitent,  either  by  enlightening  him  di- 
rectly, or  by  using  him  to  reflect  a  light 
which  he  hardly  sees  himself. 

In  these  ways,  then,  they  who  frequent  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance  are  ever  advancing 
in  a  truer  knowledge  of  themselves. 

5.  And  lastly,  there  is  another  light 
vouchsafed  to  them  directly,  an  illumination 
which  falls  inwardly  upon  the  conscience 
from  the  increase  of  spiritual  grace.  For, 
as  every  Sacrament  conveys  an  increase  of 
grace,  and  every  grace  brings  light,  so  every 
time  we  worthily  receive  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  we  receive  a  greater  inward  light. 
Self-examination  prepares  for  the  Sacrament, 
and  the  Sacrament  elevates  it  to  a  superna- 
tural knowledge  of  self.  At  the  beginning 
we  see  ourselves  but  dimly,  and  can  discern 
little  with  truth.  We  "  see  men,  as  it  were 
trees,  walking  ;''*  but  in  a  little  while  all 
becomes  self-evident  as  the  light  of  day.  It 
was  by  this  internal  light  that  Saints  have 

*  St.  Mark,  viii.  24. 


46  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

called  themselves  the  "  chief  of  sinners  ;" 
that  St.  Clare  wondered  that  her  sisters  did 
not  shun  her  as  u  one  stricken  with  the 
plague."  St.  Vincent  Ferrer  used  to  say, 
that  he  daily  grew  worse  and  worse.  It 
was  this  that  made  St.  Francis  Borgia  con- 
struct what  he  called  the  ladder  of  confusion. 
That  is,  he  first  placed  himself  before  the 
Holy  Trinity,  and  was  overwhelmed  by  the 
contrast  of  the  uncreated  Sanctity  and  our 
created  infirmity.  Next  he  placed  himself 
in  the  light  of  the  Sacred  Humanity,  and 
confounded  himself  at  the  sight  of  his  own 
nature,  so  shattered  and  defaced  ;  then  in 
the  presence  of  the  Immaculate  Mother  of 
God,  a  mere  creature,  though  God's  mother, 
and  humbled  himself  for  the  soils  and  stains 
of  both  original  and  actual  sin  ;  then  before 
the  Holy  Angels,  and  condemned  his  own 
tardy  and  lingering  obedience  by  the  energy 
and  fervour  of  their  ministries  ;  then  of  the 
Saints,  and  by  their  perseverance  he  mea- 
sured his  own  inconstancy  ;  then  of  the 
servants  of  God  on  earth,  of  whom  he  pro- 
fessed himself  to  be  the  least ;  then  of  the 


OF    SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  47 

souls   in   Purgatory,   of    whom   the   least 
humble  is  more  profoundly  humble  than  any 
Saint  on  earth  ;  then  of  the  souls  that  are 
lost,  confessing  that  if  they  had  received 
his  grace  they  would  have  been  holier  and 
more  penitent  than  himself.     Such  was  his 
practice  for  some  two  hours  a  day,  during 
which   he   examined   himself  by   the   ten 
commandments,  and  after  each  made  acts  of 
contrition  for  his  many  and  grievous  trans- 
gressions.    Such  was  the  self-examination 
of  a  Saint.     He  had  no  difficulty  in  finding 
matter  of  humiliation,    though   he  had  so 
little  ;  we  find  it  a   hard  task,  though  we 
have  sinned  so  much.     And  why  ?     It  is 
because  our  internal  perceptions  of  God  and 
of  His  Kingdom  are  faint  and  dim.     The 
knowledge  of  God  and  of  ourselves  comes 
and  goes,  and  varies  together.    St.  Francis, 
who  on  Mount  Alvernia  received  from  the 
flaming  Seraph  on  the  Cross  the  five  piercing 
rays  which  imprinted  on  him  the  stigmata 
of  Jesus,  spent  the  whole  of  a  lonely  night 
under    the  alternate   illumination   of  this 
knowledge  of  God  and  of  himself,  pouring 


48  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

out  his  soul  in  repeating :  "  0  my  God  ! 
how  great  art  Thou  ;  how  little  am  I !" 
From  whence,  then,  did  all  these  great 
Saints  receive  this  profound  light  of  self- 
knowledge,  but  from  the  life  of  Penance,  of 
which  this  Sacrament  is  the  source  and 
perfection. 

From  all  that  has  been  said  two  plain 
practical  truths  are  evident.  First,  that  we 
may  never  think  that  we  know  all  we  might 
of  ourselves.  In  the  heart  there  are  so 
many  windings  and  doubles,  so  many  masks 
and  disguises,  so  many  false  lights,  so  much 
paint  upon  the  face,  and  so  many  artificial 
expressions  of  countenance,  that  it  is  certain 
we  deceive  ourselves  as  well  as  others.  They 
who  know  themselves  best  are  only  least 
deceived.  This  we  may  understand  by 
thinking  how  different  our  past  life  looks 
now.  At  the  time  we  thought  it  all  fair, 
just  as  we  think  our  present  life.  We  sus- 
pected nothing  wrong  in  things  which  now 
seem  manifestly  wrong.  We  were  as  confi- 
dent of  our  motives  and  intentions  then  as 
we  are  now.  But  a  few  years  have  thrown 


OF   SELF-KNOWLEDGE.  49 

a  new  light  upon  it  all.  A  few  years  hence 
and  we  shall  see  our  present  as  now  we  see 
our  past.  How  different  all  will  look  upon 
a  deathbed  !  Then  a  new  and  true  light 
will  reveal  a  multitude  of  secrets,  and  show 
much  that  we  never  believed  possible.  How 
different  all  will  appear  when  we  look  back 
upon  our  earthly  life  from  the  world  beyond 
the  grave,  in  the  hour  of  the  particular 
judgment,  and  at  the  moment  of  entering 
Purgatory,  and  at  the  general  judgment  of 
the  last  day!  Then  all  masks  shall  be  taken 
off  from  all  faces,  and  we  shall  know  as  we 
are  known  and  see  as  we  are  seen.  Then 
many  who  have  seemed  to  know  each  other, 
parents,  children,  friends,  pastors,  penitents, 
shall  know  each  other  for  the  first  time,  and 
wonder  at  the  vain  show  in  which  they 
lived  and  died.  We  must,  therefore,  be 
always  pressing  onwards  in  the  knowledge 
of  self,  with  much  self-mistrust  and  with 
a  sincere  desire  to  know  the  worst  of  our- 
selves. 

And  next,  we  may  learn  never  to  fear 
when  we  see  the  worst  of  ourselves.     To 


50      THE  SACRAMENT  OF  SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 

see  more  sins  is  no  sign  of  committing  more, 
but  of  greater  knowledge  of  self.  And  if  we 
have  more  knowledge  then  more  light,  and 
if  more  light  then  more  of  the  presence  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  For  when  He  comes  into 
the  heart  He  casts  a  broad  light  upon  it, 
but  conceals  Himself.  We  see  ourselves, 
not  Him,  and  He  reveals  to  us,  not  the 
things  which  are  pleasant  to  us,  but  those 
that  are  displeasing  to  Himself ;  not  our 
graces,  or  prayers,  or  good  dispositions,  but 
our  sins  and  omissions,  our  inward  faults, 
our  unstable  wills,  our  unloving  hearts.  He 
reveals  to  us  that  we  are  poor  and  miserable, 
outcast,  blind,  and  naked,  that  we  may  buy 
of  Him  gold  tried  in  the  fire,  and  white 
raiment,  and  eyesalve  to  open  our  eyes, 
that  we  may  see  ourselves  as  we  appear  now 
in  His  sight  and  in  the  light  of  His  eternal 
throne. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  SACRAMENT  OF  PENANCE  THE  MEANS  OF 
PERFECTING  OUR  CONTRITION. 

WE  have  seen  how  the  Sacrament  of  Penance 
requires,  and  infuses,  and  perfects  the  know- 
ledge of  ourselves,  and  next  I  wish  to  show 
how  in  like  manner  it  requires,  and  infuses, 
and  perfects  our  contrition.  It  is  not  only 
true  that  they  who  are  least  contrite  go  less 
often  to  confession,  but  also  that  they  who 
go  often  become  most  contrite,  and  that  their 
contrition  is  elevated  and  matured  by  fre- 
quenting the  Sacrament  of  Penance. 

Now  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  here 
in  words  that  contrition  is  of  two  kinds,  the 
contrition  of  fear  and  the  contrition  of  love. 
But  in  the  production  of  this  sorrow  there 
are  many  distinct  motives,  progressive  in 
their  operation,  and  ascending  in  their  kind 
from  the  lowest  sorrow  which  is  necessary 


52  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

to  the  Sacrament  to  the  highest,  which  is  a 
special  gift  of  God. 

1.  And  first,  there  is  a  sorrow  which 
springs  from  the  knowledge  of  our  sins. 
This  is  the  first  and  lowest  motive  of  con- 
trition, the  deadliness  and  baseness  of  our 
sins  seen  in  the  light  of  the  presence  of 
God. 

But  at  the  outset  of  our  conversion,  or 
life  of  penance,  our  sins,  though  they  be  so 
many,  all  seem  as  one.  They  are  all 
mingled  in  confusion,  and  they  conceal  each 
other  and  themselves  by  their  multitude 
and  their  complication.  A  mountain  of 
sand  and  a  heap  of  stones  seem  to  us  at 
first  to  be  but  one  object.  It  is  only  as 
we  draw  near  to  them,  and  begin  to  look 
into  them,  and  to  separate  the  grains  and 
the  stones,  that  we  begin  to  find  their  num- 
ber. Moreover,  so  long  as  the  effects  of  a 
sinful  or  of  a  worldly  life  are  upon  the  heart, 
it  is  stunned  and  dim-sighted.  It  is  only 
gradually  that  we  begin  to  see  the  innume- 
rable multitude  of  our  sins,  and  then  they 
seem  to  us  to  surpass  all  number.  As  we 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  53 

draw  near  to  them,  they  disengage  themselves 
and  stand  out  one  by  one,  and  what  we 
once  thought  from  a  distance  to  be  but  one, 
separates  itself  into  an  infinity  of  particles. 
So  our  sins  stand  out,  each  one  in  its  dis- 
tinctness of  kind,  of  number,  and  of  cir- 
cumstance. 

And  as  this  process  is  advancing,  so  also 
our  sorrow  is  increasing.  We  had  in  the 
beginning  a  sorrow  for  the  sins  of  our  life, 
seen  in  the  tangle  and  confusion  of  our  first 
conversion.  But  now  we  feel  a  sorrow  for 
each  as  we  remember  them  one  by  one  ; 
and  a  greater  sorrow  it  may  be  for  each, 
one  by  one,  than  before  we  felt  for  all 
together.  I  have  already  attempted  to  de- 
scribe this  process  of  growing  illumination, 
by  which  we  gradually  attain  a  more  ade- 
quate perception  of  our  state  before  God.  I 
say  a  more  adequate,  because,  after  all,  it  is 
but  a  small  part  of  the  great  and  complex 
multitude  of  the  sins  of  our  life,  which  we 
ever  see  in  this  world.  They  were  all  pre- 
sent one  by  one,  in  their  distinctness  and 
in  their  guilt,  before  the  Divine  vision  of 


54  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Jesus,  in  the  garden  of  His  agony  :  they 
are  all  written  in  the  Book  of  His  remem- 
brance :  they  will  all  be  revived  before  our 
eyes  in  the  particular  judgment,  but  now 
our  fullest  perception  of  them  is  inadequate, 
and  falls  far  short  of  these  true  and  Divine 
revelations  of  what  we  are.  Still  as  they 
come  out  more  and  more  into  the  light,  so 
they  become  each  one  a  subject  of  sorrow. 
Though  our  Lord  does  not  require  of  us  a 
separate  act  of  sorrow  for  each  separate  sin, 
yet  each  separate  sin  as  it  comes  to  mind 
will  be  a  new  motive  to  sorrow,  and  though 
the  act  of  sorrow  be  but  one,  the  motives 
will  be  many.  But  all  this  may  be  no  more 
than  the  sorrow  of  holy  fear,  awakened  by 
the  deadliness  and  the  baseness  of  our  sins, 
as  they  stand  out  before  the  conscience  illu- 
minated by  the  Spirit  of  God. 

2.  There  is  then  another  kind  of  sorrow, 
more  pure  and  generous,  which  springs  from 
a  sense  of  the  love  of  God. 

He  loved  us  while  we  were  yet  in  sin. 
The  Prodigal  in  the  far  country  remembered 
his  father,  and  his  father's  love.  The  con- 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  55 

sciousness  that  his  father  loved  him  still, 
moved  him  to  return,  and  to  accuse  himself 
with  a  profound  humility.  The  sense  of  his 
unworthiness  and  of  his  ingratitude,  was 
sharpened  by  the  sense  of  his  father's  ten- 
derness. The  sunshine  of  his  childhood  and 
of  his  boyhood,  and  the  light  of  his  father's 
countenance,  rose  full  upon  him  once  more, 
and  he  knew  that  although  he  was  all 
changed,  his  father  was  still  the  same  ; 
that  though  his  heart  was  hardened,  his 
father's  heart  was  yet  full  of  loving-kind- 
ness. All  this  he  felt  while  he  was  still  far 
off  in  his  misery.  How  much  more  when 
his  father  fell  upon  his  neck,  gave  him  the 
kiss  of  peace,  and  arrayed  him  once  more  in 
the  raiment  and  the  ring  of  sonship.  Then 
the  consciousness  of  his  own  selfishness  and 
ingratitude  deepened  all  his  contrition.  It 
was  keen  while  he  was  yet  trembling  in  his 
sins,  but  keener  far  when  his  sins  had  been 
forgiven.  The  absolution  of  his  father's 
love  elevated  him  to  a  higher,  and  to  a  more 
generous,  because  a  more  loving  sorrow. 
So  it  is  in  the  Sacrament  of  Penance,  when 


56  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

we  have  indeed  "tasted  that  the  Lord  is 
sweet,"  and  have  been  made  the  subjects  of 
His  miraculous  love.     When  we  have  re- 
ceived from  Him  the  pledge  that  "  when  as 
yet  we  were  sinners,  Christ  died  for  us,"* 
arid  while  we  were   yet  in   our   sins,  our 
Heavenly  Father  loved  us  with  an  everlast- 
ing love,  then  we  begin  to  understand  the 
words  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  "  God  so  loved  the 
world  as  to  give  His   only  begotten  Son, 
that  whosoever  believeth  in  Him  may  not 
perish,  but   have   life    everlasting."!     "In 
this  is  charity  :  not  as  though  we  had  loved 
God,  but  because  He  hath  first  loved  us,  and 
sent  His  Son  to  be  a  propitiation  for  our 
sins."J     Then   we   see   that   but   for   this 
changeless  love  we  should  long  since  have 
died  eternally  ;  that  by  it  He  bore  with  us 
in  childhood,  in  the  times  of  our  ignorance  ; 
in  youth,  in  the  time  of  our  sin  ;  and  in 
manhood,  in  the  time  of  our  cool  and  deli- 
berate self-love.     It  is  "the  mercies  of  the 
Lord  that  we  are  not  consumed  :  because 

*  Eom.  v.  8.  t  St.  John,  iii.  16. 

J  1  St.  John,  iv.  10. 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  57 

His  tender  mercies  have  not  failed."*  We 
wake  up  to  know  that  we  have  been  encom- 
passed and  enveloped  in  the  love  of  God, 
that  we  have  been  borne  up  and  sustained 
by  it,  even  when  we  thought  nothing  of 
Him,  nay,  even  when  we  were  provoking 
Him  every  day,  as  if  the  Prodigal  after  his 
return  had  begun  to  carry  himself  loftily, 
and  to  forget  his  past  unworthiness,  and 
even  to  relapse,  and  after  his  relapse  to  be 
once  more  forgiven.  For  such  is  our  state. 
Again  and  again  we  have  sinned  like  the 
Prodigal,  and  again  and  again  our  Heavenly 
Father  has  received  us,  as  He  did  at  the 
first  time,  with  the  kiss  of  peace  and  perfect 
absolution.  It  was  this  thought  that  made 
Saint  Catherine  of  Genoa  so  profoundly  con- 
trite. In  the  progress  of  her  repentance,  a 
ray  of  God's  love  so  intensely  burning  and 
piercing  was  infused  into  her  soul,  that  all 
appeared  to  her  in  a  new  light,  her  past  and 
her  present  life,  her  sins  of  thought,  word, 
and  deed,  her  sins  of  commission  and  omis- 

*  Lam.  iii.  22. 


58  PENANCE   THE  SACRAMENT 

sion,  all  bore  a  new  meaning,  and  received 
a  new  interpretation. 

3.  Again,  there  is  another  motive  of 
sorrow,  that  is,  the  special  sense  of  our  per- 
sonal sinfulness.  I  have  already  spoken  of 
the  sorrow  arising  from  the  knowledge  of 
our  sins,  but  this  sorrow  for  our  personal 
sinfulness  is  different  in  kind.  Many  who 
are  covered  with  a  multitude  of  sins  have 
little  of  it.  Some  have  most  of  it,  whose 
sins  are  lightest  and  fewest,  for  it  is  a  per- 
ception depending  upon  what  we  are.  And 
the  most  saintly  hearts  are  the  most  illumi- 
nated. I  have  already  quoted  St.  Clare, 
St.  Vincent  Ferrar,  and  St.  Francis  Borgia 
as  proofs.  I  might  take  one  more  example, 
and  that  from  St.  Paul,  who  says,  "that 
Christ  Jesus  came  into  this  world  to  save 
sinners,  of  whom  I  am  the  chief;"*  and  this 
he  said  not  by  way  of  a  pious  exaggeration, 
but  because  of  the  knowledge  he  had  ot 
himself.  It  is  no  rash  and  rhetorical 
over-statement,  but  the  true  expression  of 
his  inward  consciousness,  as  the  following 

*  1  Tim.  i.  15. 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  59 

reasons  will  show  :  First  of  all,  we  do  not 
know  so  much  formal  evil  of  any  one  as  we 
know  of  ourselves.  We  may,  indeed,  know 
more  material  evil  of  many,  that  is,  we  may 
know  of  many  who  have  fallen  into  sins 
more  glaring  and  scandalous,  from  which 
we  have  been  preserved.  But  the  formal 
evil  of  actions  is  to  be  estimated  by  the  in- 
ternal acts,  and  these  by  the  light  we  pos- 
sess, and  by  the  operations  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  against  whom  we  have  sinned.  It 
is  certain,  therefore,  that  lesser  sins  against 
greater  light  are  more  formally  sinful  than 
greater  sins  against  lesser  light.  And  it  is 
this  we  may  know  of  ourselves,  but  we  can- 
not know  of  any  other.  Our  Lord  one  day 
said  to  St.  Mechtildis  :  "  Come  and  see  the 
least  in  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  and  thou 
shalt  know  the  fountain  of  loving  kindness. 
And  she  saw  a  man  clothed  in  a  green  gar- 
ment, with  smooth  hair,  of  middle  stature, 
and  very  beautiful  countenance.  She  asked, 
Who  art  thou?  and  he  said,  I  was  upon 
earth  a  robber  and  a  malefactor,  and  never 
did  I  anything  good.  She  asked,  How  didst 


60  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

thou  enter  into  this  joy  ?  He  answered,  All 
the  evils  I  did  were  done  not  out  of  wicked- 
ness, but  as  by  custom ;  and  because  I  knew 
no  better,  because  I  was  reared  up  in  them 
by  my  parents,  wherefore  by  penance  I 
found  mercy  with  God."* 

Again,  we  do  not  know  of  any  one  who 
has  received  so  great  graces  as  we  have. 
Others  may  have  received  more,  but  we  do 
not  know  it.  We  are  able  to  measure  in 
some  degree,  but  that  most  imperfectly,  the 
numberless  gifts  which  God  has  bestowed 
upon  each  one  of  us ;  that  is,  in  our 
Baptism,  Confirmation,  Communions,  and 
Penance,  in  our  childhood,  youth,  and 
manhood  ;  the  lights,  inspirations,  stings  of 
conscience,  and  impulses  of  heart,  which 
have  perpetually  moved  and  sustained  us. 
All  this  inner  world  of  our  own  God  knows, 
and  so  does  each  one  for  himself.  But  of 
another  no  man  can  judge.  Even  the  nearest 
do  not  know  how  much  grace  God  has 
bestowed  upon  others.  How  much  less  can 
we  know  and  judge  those  who  are  afar  off. 

*  Revelationes  Selectae  Stee.  Mechtildis,  c.  xvi. 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  61 

We  are  conscious  not  only  of  the  abundance 
of  Sacramental  graces,  but  of  the  graces  out 
of  the  Sacraments,  which  have  filled  the  at- 
mosphere in  which  we  breathe,  and  pervade 
every  moment  of  our  lives.  So  far  as  we 
know,  none  have  ever  received  so  many,  none 
have  ever  been  so  followed  and  sustained,  so 
invited  and  solicited,  so  warned  and  so 
encouraged.  All  the  wonderful  long-suf- 
fering and  patience,  the  delicacy  and  gene- 
rosity of  the  Holy  Spirit  with  us  from  our 
Baptism,  we  know.  It  is  like  the  conti- 
nuous beat  of  our  heart,  which  we  have  felt 
from  our  earliest  childhood.  We  are  per. 
sonally  conscious  of  our  own  spiritual  life, 
but  we  can  only  know  that  of  another  by 
hearsay,  and  a  most  imperfect  and  fragmen- 
tary observation.  And  as  we  know  of  no 
one  who  has  received  so  many  graces  as  we 
have,  so  we  know  of  no  one  who  has  so  little 
corresponded  with  them.  Out  of  many 
lights  we  have  followed  few,  and  out  of 
many  invitations  we  have  accepted  only  a 
scanty  number.  Many  graces  we  have 
altogether  lost  by  resistance,  and  many 


62  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

with  which  we  ought  to  have  corresponded 
generously  and  adequately  we  have  hardly 
answered  at  all,  or  with  an  ungenerous  re- 
serve. What  might  we  not  have  been  now, 
if  we  had  been  true  to  our  baptismal  grace  ? 
How  soon  it  was  soiled,  how  wantonly  it 
was  squandered ;  how  tardily  and  re- 
luctantly we  answered  to  the  grace  of  con- 
version, which  led  us  back  to  penance  ; 
how  little  time  we  retained  our  first  abso- 
lution, or  the  fervour  of  our  first  commu- 
nion, or  the  strength  of  our  confirmation,  or 
the  spirit  of  holy  fear  which  came  upon  us 
in  our  chastisements,  or  the  spirit  of  praise 
which  sprung  up  within  us  in  the  days  of 
consolation.  All  our  whole  life  has  been  a 
long  series  of  graces  given  profusely  and 
little  used,  of  Divine  generosity  and  human 
illiberality,  of  inexhaustible  mercy  on  God's 
part  and  niggardly  returns  on  ours.  It  is 
not  only  then  the  sight  of  our  sins,  of  which 
I  spoke  first,  but  the  sight  of  ourselves,  and 
of  our  sins  as  committed  in  the  midst  of 
such  graces,  and  by  one  who  has  been  singled 
out  for  such  endless  and  countless  mercies, 


OF  PERFECT   CONTRITION.  63 

that  ought  to  deepen  our  sorrow  with  a 
new  motive,  and  to  soften  us  with  a  pecu- 
liar sense  of  our  own  personal  sinfulness. 

4.  But  there  is  still  another  kind  of  sor- 
row less  personal,  and  more  generous  than 
the  last,  and  that  is,  the  sorrow  which 
springs  from  the  passion  of  Jesus:  "They 
shall  look  upon  Me,  whom  they  have 
pierced  :  and  they  shall  mourn  for  Him."* 
With  the  marvellous  precision  of  thought 
which  marks  the  Theology  of  the  Church,  a 
distinction  is  made  between  the  imperfect 
and  the  perfect  contrition,  that  is,  between 
attrition  and  contrition,  properly  so  called. 
The  word  attrition  signifies  the  bruising 
of  the  heart,  as  by  a  fall,  or  by  a  blow ;  but 
contrition  signifies  the  bruising  to  powder, 
the  perfect  breaking  up  of  the  hardness  of 
the  heart.  The  former  expresses  well  the 
action  of  grace,  but  the  latter  the  action 
which  love  alone  can  accomplish ;  and  such 
is  the  distinction  I  have  tried  to  mark 
between  a  sorrow  for  our  sins  and  a  sorrow 
for  our  personal  sinfulness. 

*  Zach.  xii.  10. 


64  PENANCE   THE  SACRAMENT 

There  is,  however,  another  word  in  com- 
mon use,  still  more  expressive,  and  with  a 
distinction  more  clearly  and  finely  marked, 
and  that  is,  compunction.  This  signifies  a 
piercing,  and  a  piercing  together  with  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  a  partaking  in  His 
wounds,  as  compassion  is  partaking  in  His 
sufferings.  As  contrition,  then,  is  the  per- 
fection of  attrition,  compunction  is  the 
perfection  of  contrition.  It  is  its  mature 
and  ultimate  form,  and  stands  to  the  pre- 
vious kinds  of  sorrow  as  the  Beatitudes  to 
the  gifts  and  graces  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
After  the  sorrow  and  shame  which  spring 
from  contemplating  the  guilt,  and  baseness, 
and  deadliness  of  sin,  comes  the  sorrow 
which  springs  from  God's  love  and  our  own 
ingratitude,  and  then  from  the  sufferings  of 
the  Sacred  Heart  in  Gethsemani  and  on 
Calvary,  and  from  our  personal  guilt  towards 
Him  who  loved  us  so  much,  and  has  been 
loved  by  us  so  little.  The  motives  of  this 
sorrow  are  specially,  the  Bloody  Sweat,  the 
five  Sacred  Wounds,  the  wounds  of  the 
Sacred  Countenance,  and  the  Divine  Sorrow 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  65 

of  the  Sacred  Heart.  "  All  the  day  long 
have  I  spread  forth  My  hands  to  a  people 
that  belie veth  not  and  contradicteth  Me."* 
And  in  His  outstretched  palms,  the  print  of 
the  nails  reproaches  us  with  the  sharpness 
of  death,  which  He  overcame  for  us,  and 
for  the  hardness  of  heart  with  which  we  have 
crucified  Him  again  and  again  unto  our- 
selves. He  is  always  before  our  eyes  set  forth 
crucified  among  us,t  and  crying  to  us  from 
the  Cross,  "  0  all  ye  that  pass  by  the  way, 
attend  and  see  if  there  be  any  sorrow  like  to 
My  sorrow  :  for  He  hath  made  a  vintage  of 
Me,  as  the  Lord  spoke  in  the  day  of  His 
fierce  anger. "t  Truly  we  pass  by  and  leave 
Him  to  hang  all  alone  upon  His  Cross  for 
us  ;  we  pass  by,  and  pass  on  to  our  plea- 
sure, our  forgetfulness,  our  ease;  and  the 
remembrance  of  His  ineffable  sorrow  leaves 
no  impression  upon  our  lives,  and  casts  no 
shadow  over  our  careless  hearts.  We  go  all 
the  day  without  remembering  Him.  We 
look  upon  the  Crucifix,  without  accusing 
ourselves  of  having  caused  His  great  sorrow, 

*  Rom.  x.  12.          t  Gal.  iii.  1.        J  Lam.  i.  12. 


66  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

and  of  robbing  His  Cross  of  its  fruit  in  our- 
selves, and  of  renewing  His  Passion,  by 
returning  to  the  sins  for  which  He  died. 
Now  this  sorrow,  once  conceived,  is  a  sorrow 
which  will  grow  as  long  as  life  lasts,  for  the 
contemplation  of  the  Passion  of  Jesus  is 
inexhaustible,  and  at  every  new  manifesta- 
tion of  His  love  and  of  His  sufferings  casts 
a  new  light  upon  our  sins.  And  here  we 
have  the  key  to  what  we  have  already  seen, 
namely,  that  the  greatest  Saints  have  sor- 
rowed most  for  sin.  They  have  sorrowed 
most,  because  they  have  known  most  of  His 
love  and  Passion,  and  because  they  were 
most  like  Him,  in  His  hatred  for  sin,  and 
His  zeal  for  the  glory  of  His  Father.  Such 
then,  was  the  illuminated  compunction  of 
St.  Paul,  when  he  called  himself  the  chief  of 
sinners.  It  is  the  perfection  of  such  sorrow 
to  be  self-forgetting.  As  it  is  purified  of 
self,  it  remembers  only  Jesus.  St.  Mary 
Magdalen,  when  she  hurried  to  the  Phari- 
see's house,  and  stood  behind  our  Divine 
Redeemer,  weeping,  was  full  of  sorrow  and 
of  love  ;  and  yet  what  was  her  contrition 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  67 

then,  compared  with  her  sorrow  when  she 
stood  by  the  Cross  of  Jesus  on  Calvary,  or 
when  she  lingered  all  alone  and  weeping  at 
the  empty  Sepulchre,  and  knew  not  where 
they  had  laid  Him  ?*  What  made  this  change 
in  her  sorrow,  but  the  Passion  of  Jesus,  the 
true  and  Divine  Crucifix  on  which  she  had 
gazed  on  Calvary?  We  read  in  the  writings 
of  B.  Angela  of  Foligno,  that  she  passed 
through  eighteen  degrees  of  compunction, 
beginning  with  aconfession  in  which,  through 
natural  shame,  she  concealed  her  sins,  and 
ending  in  the  sorrow  of  the  Saints.     After 
she  had  made  many  steps  in  the  way  of  con- 
trition, she  tells   us  that  one  day,  at  the 
sight  of  the  Crucifix,  a  flood  of  sorrow  and 
self-accusation  came  upon  her,  with  a  sense 
of  her  ingratitude  to  Him  whom  her  sins 
had  pierced,  so  that  she  was  overwhelmed 
with  a  grief  beyond   control.     And  ever 
afterwards  the  sight  of  a  Crucifix  was  enough 
to  throw  her  into  a  tumult  of  sorrow,  inso- 
much that  her  companions  were  forced  to 
hide  it  from  her.     Such  is  the  contrition  of 

*  St.  John,  xx.  2. 


68  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

a  soul  pierced  with  the  consciousness  of  the 
wounds  of  Jesus,  and  wounded  itself  by 
them.  It  says,  with  St.  Paul,  "  With 
Christ  I  am  nailed  to  the  Cross,"*  and  with 
Him  it  sorrows,  and  for  His  sake. 

5.  Lastly,  there  is  a  sorrow  which  crowns 
all,  and  is  the  special  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
a  sorrow  which  St.  Paul  calls  "  the  sorrow 
that  is  according  to  God,  working  penance 
steadfast  unto  salvation.''^  Our  Lord  pro- 
mised this  sorrow,  when  He  said,  "  When 
He,"  that  is  the  Holy  Ghost,  "  is  come,  He 
will  convince  the  world  of  sin."}  We  have 
seen  how  a  penitent  who  brings  nothing  but 
the  sorrow  of  Faith  and  Hope  to  the  Sacra- 
ment of  Penance,  receives  therein  the 
sanctifying  grace  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
Charity  ;  and  by  the  infusion  of  Charity  is 
raised  once  more  to  the  life  of  God,  and 
elevated  to  union  with  Him.  Thenceforth 
he  is  able  to  make  acts  of  perfect  contrition. 
Though  perhaps  at  the  time  of  his  absolution 
he  may  not  do  so,  yet  he  is  thereby  placed 
in  a  state  of  habitual  power  so  to  do.  And 

*  Gal.  ii.  19.     t  2  Cor.  vii.  10.     $  S.  John,  xvi.  8. 


OF   PERFECT  CONTRITION.  69 

all  the  motives  of  contrition  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  begin  to  work  upon  his  heart,  and 
his  whole  disposition  of  soul  towards  God 
becomes  more  filial,  loving,  and  generous  ; 
and  the  vision  of  God,  and  of  himself,  grows 
more  clear  and  abiding,  and  his  sense  of  the 
love  and  of  the  Passion  of  Jesus  more  vivid 
and  subduing,  so  that  day  by  day  his  sorrow 
is   purified   of  servile   fear   and  of  selfish 
desires.     In  the  measure  in  which  the  sanc- 
tificationof  the  soul  is  deepened  and  enlarged, 
the  sorrow  for  sin  is  increased.    That  which 
hinders  sorrow  for  sin  is  sin  itself.     The 
more  sin  is  cast  out,  the  more  sorrow  enters. 
Therefore,  as  we  have  seen,  the   greatest 
Saints  have  always  had  the  greatest  sorrow 
for  their  own  sins,  and  also  for  the  sins  of 
others.     They  have  lamented  all  their  life 
long,  with  a  vehemence  of  self-accusation, 
for  acts  which  others,  perhaps,  would  have 
hardly  confessed  at  all.     St.  Teresa  speaks 
of  herself  in  a  language  which  would  make 
us  suppose  her  guilty  of  great  and  grave 
sins,  when  from  her  confessors  we  know 
that  she  never  committed  a  mortal  sin.  The 


70  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

cause  of  this  is  the  supernatural  light  in 
which  she  estimated  sin,  as  in  the  light  of 
God  Himself.  The  consciousness  that  in 
sinning  we  have  grieved  and  resisted  the 
Holy  Ghost  our  Sanctifier,  our  patient 
Guide,  and  our  Helper,  who  from  our  Bap- 
tism has  never  left  us  for  a  moment,  unless 
we  have  forsaken  Him,  and  at  the  first 
relenting  of  our  hearts  has  returned  to  us, 
to  inhabit  our  whole  soul  in  all  its  power  of 
action  and  affection,  is  the  last  perfection  of 
a  contrite  heart. 

We  have  seen  how  the  sorrows  of  St.  Mary 
Magdalen  increased  in  purity  and  intensity 
as  she  drew  nearer  to  the  Passion  and  Cross 
of  Jesus ;  but  there  were  others  with  her  on 
Calvary,  whose  sorrow  for  sin  was  deeper 
and  more  profound  than  hers.  The  Beloved 
Disciple  knew  even  more  profoundly  the 
deadliness  of  sin,  and  the  Divine  hatred 
against  it.  In  the  heart  of  the  Immaculate 
Mother  of  God,  seven  dolours ;  like  the  cur- 
rents of  seven  seas,  met  together.  She  who 
was  without  sin  knew  best  of  all  creatures 
the  baseness  and  deadliness  of  sin,  the  love 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  71 

of  God,  the  personal  sinfulness  of  men,  the 
passion  of  her  Divine  Son  for  sinners  ;  and 
because  she  had  no  sin,  therefore  her  sorrow 
was  according  to  God,  profound,  supernatu- 
ral, and  intense,  to  the  full  measure  of  which 
a  creature  is  capable. 

There  was  then  never  any  sorrow  greater 
than  hers,  except  one,  the  sorrow  of  Jesus 
Himself.  His  sorrow  in  Gethsemani  is  the 
type  of  perfect  contrition.  It  was  a  sorrow 
for  sin,  and  for  the  love  of  God,  free,  pure, 
and  generous.  "  Yelut  mare  contritio  tua."* 
His  contrition  was  as  the  sea,  profound, 
overwhelming,  and  immense :  and  in  propor- 
tion as  we  are  conformed  to  His  Sacred 
Heart,  our  contrition  will  be  like  His  great 
sorrow.  The  thought  of  God,  of  His  glory, 
of  His  love,  rises  over  everything  else.  As 
St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  says  of  Purgatory, 
it  is  not  so  much  the  remembrance  of  sin,  as 
the  love  of  God,  which  causes  the  pain  of 
the  holy  souls.  For  their  sorrow  ascending 
to  God  is  like  His  own  sorrow.  It  is  like 
the  Divine  displeasure  with  which  the  Holy 

*  Lam.  ii.  13. 


72  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Ghost  looks  upon  our  sins,  when,  as  St.  Paul 
says,  we  "  grieve  Him  ;"*  it  is  the  grief  of 
God  Himself.  The  sorrow  of  Jesus  is  the 
sorrow  also  of  a  human  heart,  but  the  grief 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  altogether  and  alone 
Divine. 

Such  is  the  universal  and  efficacious,  the 
supernatural  and  tranquil  sorrow,  which  the 
Church  calls  perfect  contrition,  raised  from 
motive  to  motive,  and  matured  by  the  pre- 
sence and  operations  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in 
the  soul. 

And  now,  although  such  a  sorrow  is  the 
gift  of  God,  yet  it  is  to  be  sought  and  to  be 
obtained  in  and  through  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance.  I  have  already  shown  to  whom 
it  is  necessary,  and  to  whom  it  is  beneficial. 
Some  confessions,  therefore,  are  of  obligation, 
and  some  of  devotion.  We  may  leave  aside 
the  confessions  of  necessity  and  of  obligation, 
for  I  am  now  chiefly  speaking  of  confessions 
of  devotion.  I  desire  to  show  that  frequent 
confession  is  a  great  and  manifold  benefit, 
even  to  those  to  whom  it  is  not  necessary. 

*  Eph.  iv.  30. 


OF   PERFECT   CONTRITION.  73 

I  have  shown  how  it  exacts  and  sustains  the 
habit  of  a  stated  reckoning  with  ourselves, 
how  it  renews  our  absolution  and  our  peace 
with  God,  how  it  infuses  a  new  Sacramental 
grace  every  time  we  receive  it,  and  how  it 
continually  elevates  and  perfects  our  attri- 
tion, changing  it  into  contrition  ;  and  our 
contrition,  illuminating  it  and  changing  it 
into  compunction.  And  all  these  benefits 
are  obtained  by  those  who  come  worthily  to 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance  week  by  week, 
even  though  they  bring  only  venial  sins,  or 
even  nothing  but  a  renewed  accusation  and 
contrition  for  mortal  sins  long  ago  confessed 
and  forgiven. 

And  in  order  that  frequent  confession  may 
be  neither  a  mere  habit,  nor  a  too  familiar 
act,  we  shall  do  well  to  keep  alive  the  habit 
of  making  acts  of  contrition  not  only  day  by 
day,  but  often  every  day.  It  is  a  good  and 
useful  practice  to  make  a  list  of  the  sins  by 
which  we  have  displeased  God,  or  to  which 
we  are  most  tempted,  and  to  repeat  them 
name  by  name  every  morning,  together  with 
a  list  of  the  graces  most  opposed  to  them, 

F 


74     SACRAMENT  OF  PERFECT  CONTRITION. 

and  to  ask  them  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  with 
acts  of  sorrow  for  the  many  times  we  have 
grieved  Him  by  the  faults  for  which  we  have 
been  guilty.  In  this  way  we  may  renew 
our  sorrow  for  the  mortal  sins  already  con- 
fessed and  absolved,  for  the  venial  sins  not 
yet  confessed,  and  for  the  entanglement  and 
confusion  of  thoughts,  words,  deeds,  and 
omissions  which  make  up  our  daily  life.  If 
we  need  an  act  of  contrition,  we  can  find 
none  better  than  the  Name  of  Jesus  :  as, 
"  Jesus,  I  am  sorry  for  the  baseness  and  the 
multitude  of  my  sins.  Jesus  I  am  sorry, 
because  of  the  goodness  of  Thy  Father  and 
my  Father,  whom  I  have  offended.  Make 
Thou  my  sorrow  to  be  deeper,  more  loving, 
and  more  fervent  until  the  hour  of  my 
death. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   SACRAMENT    OF   PENANCE   THE    SACRA- 
MENT   OF  REPARATION. 

WE  have  seen  the  shame  and  sorrow  of  St. 
Mary  Magdalen,  in  the  house  of  Simon,  the 
Pharisee,  in  the  beginning  of  her  conversion, 
and  then  the  courage  and  fidelity  of  her  de- 
votion at  the  foot  of  the  cross  ;  and  now 
when  all  was  over,  when  she  had  watched 
the  sufferings  of  Jesus  to  the  last,  and  had 
helped  to  lay  Him  in  His  tomb,  when  all  her 
service  of  love  was  done,  her  heart  was  still 
busy  about  His  memory.  She  went  and 
brought  spices  and  ointments,  and  rested  on 
the  Sabbath-day,  intending  to  anoint  Him 
on  the  morrow.  Beautiful  and  wonderful 
fidelity  of  tender  and  grateful  love.  Jesus 
was  dead,  what  could  now  avail  these  minis- 
tries of  devotion  to  His  memory?  Yet  they 
were  due  and  sweet.  She  owed  them  to 
Him  to  whom  she  owed  all ;  and  though 


76  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

He  should  know  nothing  of  them,  they  were 
sweet  to  her  for  His  sake.  In  this  we  see 
the  character  of  generous  contrition.  From 
the  hour  that  she  washed  our  Saviour's  feet 
with  her  tears,  arid  wiped  them  with  the 
hair  of  her  head,  she  laid  aside  for  ever  the 
vanity  and  luxury  with  which  she  had 
offended  His  Divine  Sanctity.  Thencefor- 
ward all  her  life  was  a  perpetual  mortifica- 
tion of  her  natural  self.  St.  Peter,  after  he 
had  wept  bitterly  for  his  three  denials,  en- 
tered upon  a  life  of  reparation  to  his  Divine 
Master,  which  had  its  proportionate  end  and 
crown  in  his  inverted  cross  on  Mount  Jani- 
culum.  St.  Paul  says,  that  in  him  first 
Christ  Jesus  had  shewn  forth  all  patience,* 
forasmuch  as  he  had  been  " a  persecutor  and 
contumelious;"  therefore,  he  spent  a  long 
life  in  reparation,  which  he  describes  as 
"always  bearing  about  in  our  body  the  mor- 
tification of  Jesus."t  His  long  life  of  super- 
natural toil  and  suffering  was  crowned  at 
last  by  the  lictor's  sword,  at  the  Salvian 
Waters,  with  the  diadem  of  martyrdom. 

*  1  Tim.  i.  16.  t  2  Cor.  iv.  10. 


OF   REPARATION.  77 

» 

Such  was  the  spirit  of  reparation  among  the 
disciples  of  Jesus,  free,  spontaneous,  and  un- 
sparing even  unto  death.  In  this  we  have 
a  beautiful  example  of  the  spirit  of  satisfac- 
tion, which  is  infused  and  perfected  in  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance. 

Now,  the  Church  teaches  us  that  the  only 
condition  to  absolution  is  contrition,  includ- 
ing confession  either  in  fact  or  in  desire,  so 
that  satisfaction,  or  the  penance  which  fol- 
lows after,  perfects,  but  is  not  of  the  essence 
of  contrition.  Though  it  be  imposed,  never- 
theless it  is  willingly  accepted,  and,  there- 
fore, is  a  free  and  spontaneous  return  for  a 
free  and  spontaneous  pardon.  And  the 
effect  of  it  is  to  expiate  and  to  make  repara- 
tion ;  to  expiate  the  pains  due  to  us  for  the 
sins  which  have  been  absolved  by  a  volun- 
tary chastisement  of  self,  and  to  make  repa- 
ration to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  which 
we  have  wounded  by  our  ingratitudes.  Such 
is  the  penance  imposed  on  us  in  our  absolu- 
tion. But  it  also  sets  before  us  what  ought 
to  be  the  life-long  fruit  of  this  Sacrament. 
It  teaches  that  all  the  life  of  those  who  have 


78  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

been  absolved  ought  to  be  spent  in  satisfac- 
tion for  the  past. 

First,  I  will  try  to  explain  what  this  spi- 
rit of  reparation  consists  of,  and  then  will 
shew  how  it  is  infused  and  perfected  in  the 
Sacrament  of  Penance. 

1.  It  consists  then,  first,  in  an  indignation 
against  ourselves.  St.  Paul,  writing  to  the 
Corinthians,  expresses  this  as  follows  : — 
"  That  you  were  made  sorrowful  according 
to  God,  how  great  carefulness  it  worketh  in 
you :  yea  defence,  yea  indignation,  yea  fear, 
yea  desire,  yea  zeal,  yea  revenge."*  They, 
indeed,  felt  this  indignation  for  the  shame 
brought  on  them  by  the  sins  of  another. 
How  much  more  reason  for  keener  indig- 
nation have  we  for  the  sins  which  we  have 
each  one  committed  against  God ;  for  the 
sins  of  deliberation  whereby  we  have  grieved 
and  resisted  His  Holy  Spirit,  contradicted 
His  will,  broken  His  law,  and  outraged  His 
love.  God  made  us  for  Himself — for  His 
love  and  for  His  glory.  He  made  us  capa- 
ble of  knowing  and  loving,  worshipping  and 

*  2  Cor.  vii.  11. 


OF  REPARATION.  79 

serving,  of  praising  and  glorifying  Him,  but 
we  have  robbed  and  defrauded  Him.  We 
have  borne  bitter  fruits  or  have  stood  barren 
before  Him.  Is  it  possible  to  fail  of  the 
end  of  our  creation  more  than  we  have 
failed  ? 

Moreover,  we  have  need  to  be  indignant 
with  ourselves  for  our  habitual  inclination 
to  self,  for  the  love  and  worship  of  our  own 
will,  for  our  waste  of  life  and  time,  and  the 
natural  powers  which  God  has  given  us : 
for  the  neglect  of  our  visitations  and  oppor- 
tunities, of  graces,  and  of  sacraments.  If 
we  examine  one  of  our  sins  of  commission, 
or  of  omission,  in  the  light  of  God's  pre- 
sence, and  by  the  love  of  the  Incarnation 
and  Passion  of  Jesus,  or  in  the  light  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  we  shall  find  abundant  matter 
for  indignation  against  ourselves  :  if  for 
nothing  else,  for  our  instability  in  good. 
We  seem  to  have  so  little  affinity  to  it,  and 
so  little  union  with  it,  that  we  vary  and 
waver  between  good  and  evil,  as  if  they 
were  alike  to  us,  and  indifferent  in  them- 
selves. 


80  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Now.  any  one  who  has  attained  such  a 
knowledge  of  himself,  as  I  have  endeavoured 
to  explain  in  the  last  two  chapters,  must 
feel  spring  up  in  him  shame,  and  zeal,  and 
indignation  against  himself,  with  a  desire 
to  humble  and  punish  himself,  and  to  take, 
as  St.  Paul  says,  a  revenge. 

2.  Next  to  this  comes  a  sense  of  grati- 
tude. Blessed  Alvarez  used  to  say,  that  his 
faults  were  like  so  many  windows  which  let 
in  the  light  of  the  love  of  God  upon  his 
soul,  for  each  one  of  them  became  a  fresh 
evidence  of  the  patience  and  tenderness  of 
God  towards  him.  How  much  more  the  sins 
of  which  we  have  been  guilty,  and  the  faults 
which  we  carry  to  confession  every  week. 
The  love  and  compassion  of  God  which,  like  a 
great  stream,  is  continually  descend  ing  upon 
us  every  day,  would  awaken  gratitude  in  a 
stone.  He  raised  us  from  spiritual  death 
in  Baptism,  and  has  raised  us  again  and 
again  in  Penance,  sometimes,  as  St.  Augus- 
tine says,  like  Jairus's  daughter,  just  dead ; 
sometimes  like  the  widow's  son,  already 
carried  out  to  burial ;  sometimes  like  La- 


OF   REPARATION.  81 

zarus,  four  days  buried  in  the  grave.  He 
has  received  us  back  again  like  the  prodigal, 
not  once  only  but  many  times.  He  has  re- 
invested us  with  our  lost  inheritance,  and, 
perhaps  called  us  to  a  higher  path  in  His 
kingdom,  and  given  us  special  illuminations, 
and  special  union  with  Himself.  If  these 
things  do  not  elicit  gratitude  we  must  be 
dead  indeed.  Now,  the  Sacrament  of  Penance 
is  the  special  manifestation  of  these  gifts 
and  graces,  and,  therefore,  the  special  means 
of  awaking  us  to  a  sense  of  them. 

3.  A  third  element  in  the  spirit  of  repa- 
ration, is  generosity.  And  this  is  lumin- 
ously manifested  to  us  in  the  sovereign 
grace  of  absolution.  In  it  God  gives  us 
pardon  with  a  fulness,  a  freeness,  a  facility, 
and  inexhaustible  frequency  which  exceeds 
all  we  can  ask  or  think.  Even  the  most 
soiled  and  unworthy  He  restores  to  His 
peace  and  love.  Our  Heavenly  Father 
keeps  back  nothing  from  us.  All  that  is 
communicable  He  gives  to  us.  Jesus  gives 
us  all  that  He  can  part  with.  The  Holy 
Ghost  gives  Himself  and  all  things  again 


82  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

and  again,  seventy-times-seven,  as  often  as 
we  turn  and  repent.  Now  this  ought,  at 
least,  to  awake  in  us  some  generosity  in 
return.  At  least  we  ought  to  be  as  gene- 
rous in  forgiving  others  as  He  is  in  forgiv- 
ing us. 

If  God  gives  Himself  to  us,  surely  we 
cannot  be  slow  to  give  of  our  substance  in 
alms.  If  He  should  call  us  to  forsake  all 
and  to  follow  in  His  steps,  we  could  not  refuse 
to  rise  up  and  to  go  after  Him.  If  He  should 
draw  us  to  give  ourselves  to  Him,  as  He 
has  given  Himself  for  us,  how  could  we 
hang  back? 

4,  Another  disposition  included  in  the 
spirit  of  reparation,  is  a  hatred  not  only  of 
the  least  actual  sin  but  also  of  lukewarm- 
ness.  Our  absolution  shews  us  how  great 
a  price  was  paid  for  us ;  how  much  it  cost 
Him  to  institute  this  Sacrament  of  His  free 
compassion  on  our  behalf.  It  is  the  fruit 
of  His  Agony  in  the  garden  and  of  His 
Passion  upon  the  Cross.  Nothing  could 
have  obtained  it  for  us  but  His  most  Pre- 
cious Blood.  This  sets  sin  before  us  as  an 


OF   REPARATION.  83 

insult  to  His  Cross — as  a  wound  in  the 
Sacred  Heart — as  a  betrayal  of  Jesus,  some- 
times for  a  piece  of  money,  or  for  a  pleasure 
with  fair  professions  of  fidelity,  that  is,  we 
also  betray  Him  by  a  kiss.  If  He  loved  us 
so  as  to  consume  Himself  for  us  in  the  fire 
of  His  charity,  how  without  great  personal 
sin  can  we  be  lukewarm  towards  Him  ? 
Cold  returns  for  warm  friendship  are  in- 
tolerable among  men.  Neglect  will  separate 
those  who  have  never  otherwise  offended 
each  other.  So  between  us  and  Jesus.  He 
is  all  love  for  us,  and  we  have  treated  Him 
as  if  He  had  done  nothing  for  our  good  and 
suffered  nothing  in  our  stead.  It  is  very 
slowly  that  we  come  to  perceive  this  fault 
in  our  hearts,  but  when  once  perceived,  we 
know  and  we  feel  that  we  can  never  do 
enough  for  Him.  All  that  we  do  seems 
feeble  and  cold. 

5.  Lastly,  the  spirit  of  reparation  con- 
tains in  it  a  love  of  the  Cross.  Jesus  loved 
it  for  our  sakes.  If  we  love  Him,  we  must 
love  it  for  His  sake.  We  laid  it  upon  Him 
by  our  sins,  at  least  we  ought  to  be  willing 


84  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

to  lay  it  upon  ourselves  in  reparation.  St. 
Paul  says,  "  They  that  are  Christ's  have 
crucified  their  flesh  with  the  vices  and  con- 
cupiscences."* First,  in  Penance  and  the 
mortification  of  the  sin  that  dwells  in  us; 
and  next,  in  the  life  of  reparation  which 
springs  from  a  generous  love  of  our  Divine 
Master. 

For  this  cause,  the  crosses  which  come 
upon  us  from  the  hand  of  God  ought  to  be 
borne  with  submission  and  with  sweetness, 
and  the  crosses  which  come  from  the  hand 
of  men  ought  likewise  to  be  received  with 
patience,  and  even  with  gladness.  They  do 
but  conform  us  to  Jesus  in  the  two  great 
perfections  of  His  humility.  To  be  like 
Him  is  necessary  to  salvation,  and  it  is 
also  sweet  to  those  who  love  Him.  Nay,  if 
we  be  generous  we  shall  choose  to  be  like 
Him  in  His  humiliation  and  in  his  Cross, 
rather  than  to  be  prosperous  and  in  honour. 
It  is  a  hard  lesson,  but  a  true  one.  Even 
if  we  knew  that  we  might  be  saved  with 
equal  certainty  in  a  life  of  fair  days,  and 

*  Gal.  v.  24. 


OF   REPARATION.  85 

bright  lights,  and  smooth,  even  ways,  a 
generous  love  to  our  Divine  Lord  would 
make  us  choose  the  shadow  of  His  life  and 
the  sharpness  of  His  path,  because  it  unites 
us  more  closely  to  Him  if  only  by  imitation 
and  by  the  evidence  of  our  love  and  grati- 
tude. If  a  brother  or  a  friend  were  in  the 
field  of  battle,  it  would  be  still  lawful  for 
us  to  enjoy  the  pleasant  things  of  home  as 
when  they  were  with  us.  But  an  instinct 
of  generous  affection  would  make  us  turn 
from  pleasures  and  find  consolation  even  in 
privations,  as  a  way  of  sharing  in  hardship 
with  those  we  love,  and  manifesting  our 
love  to  them.  If  this  be  true  of  kinsmen 
and  friends  in  the  imperfect  state  of  our 
humanity,  how  much  more  of  Him  who  is 
not  only  our  Friend  and  Brother,  but  also 
our  Saviour  and  our  Redeemer,  our  Lord 
and  our  God. 

And  this  which  ought  to  bind  us,  if  it 
were  only  by  love  arid  gratitude,  has  ano- 
ther motive  more  personal  to  us.  A  life  of 
generous  penance  is  to  all,  even  to  the  most 
mature,  the  safer  path.  St.  Vincent  of 


86  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Paul  used  to  say,  "  If  we  had  one  foot  in 
Heaven,  yet  if  we  cease  to  mortify  ourselves, 
before  we  could  draw  the  other  after  it,  we 
should  be  in  danger  of  losing  our  soul." 
St.  Paul  says,  "  All  things  are  lawful  to  me, 
but  all  things  are  not  expedient."*  There 
are  many  things  which  I  might  lawfully  do 
which  would  not  help  me  to  overcome  my 
faults  or  avoid  temptations,  or  sanctify  my 
heart,  or  save  my  soul.  I  am  free  to  enjoy 
much  that  is  fair,  and  bright,  and  sweet, 
and  in  itself  harmless,  but  it  would  riot  add 
a  grace  to  my  soul,  nor  a  spark  of  the  love 
of  God,  nor  a  fibre  of  strength,  to  my  will. 
It  would  not  build  me  up  in  the  life  of  God. 
Now,  observe,  St.  Paul  does  not  here  try 
those  things  by  the  harm  they  would  do 
him,  nor  by  the  danger  he  might  incur 
They  would  do  him  no  good;  they  would 
add  nothing  to  his  state  before  God;  and 
they  might  become  occasions  of  some  en- 
tanglement and  temptation.  Therefore  he 
adds,  "  All  things  are  lawful  to  me,  but  I 
will  not  be  brought  under  the  power  of 

*  1  Cor.  vi.  12. 


OF   REPARATION.  87 

any  ;"*  that  is  I  will  keep  my  liberty  by  not 
using  it.  I  will  not  so  use  it  as  to  give 
to  anything  a  power  over  my  peace  and 
tranquility  of  heart,  or  over  the  freedom  of 
my  soul  from  all  things,  but  Jesus,  to  whom 
alone  I  am  in  bondage  in  the  sweet  service 
of  the  spirit  of  life. 

There  is  need  of  few  words  to  show  how 
the  Sacrament  of  Penance  infuses  and  per- 
fects this  spirit  of  generous  love.  For  it 
requires  of  us  a  firm  resolution  of  the  will 
against  all  sin,  and  it  imposes  on  us  a 
penance,  in  satisfaction  for  our  sins.  Now, 
this  penance  might  be  long  and  rigorous, 
extending  over  our  whole  life ;  but  though 
it  were  ever  so  extended,  even  until  death, 
it  would  not  make  adequate  satisfaction  for 
the  sins  we  have  committed.  How  much 
less  adequate  reparation  to  the  love  of  Jesus 
which  we  have  outraged  by  commission  and 
omission,  by  wounds  and  by  coldness. 

The  practice  of  the  Church  in  these  latter 
times  has  been  to  impose  penances  which 
are  both  light  and  consoling,  such  as  devo- 

*  1  Cor.  vi.  12. 


88  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

tion  to  the  ever-blessed  Trinity,  the  Sacred 
Heart  of  Jesus,  the  Holy  Ghost,  or  our 
Blessed  Mother — a  few  prayers  to  be  said 
once  over.  Often  this  is  all,  and  the  world 
mocks  at  it  as  a  superstition  and  a  nullity ; 
and  the  pharisaic  religion  of  these  latter 
days  treats  it  as  lax  and  antinomian. 
"  But  wisdom  is  justified  by  all  her  chil- 
dren."* It  is  especially  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance,  with  these  light  and  benign 
penances,  which  awakens  the  spirit  of  gene- 
rous love,  and  this  will  do  all  the  rest.  It 
shows  us  first  the  price  He  paid  for  us — 
how  He  suffered  for  us  a  Passion  equal  to, 
and  far  beyond,  the  guilt  of  all  our  sins,  and 
of  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  We  see, 
too,  how  great  was  the  guilt  of  our  sins, 
which  nothing  but  the  most  precious  Blood 
of  the  Incarnate  Son  could  cancel:  how 
great  must  be  the  ingratitude  and  the  hate- 
fulness  of  our  sin,  which  pierced  the  Son  of 
God  with  His  unknown  and  unspeakable 
sorrows.  Every  absolution  bears  this  wit- 
ness to  us.  Next  it  shows  us  how  little 

*  St.  Luke,  vii.  35. 


OF   REPARATION.  89 

He  exacts  from  us.  He  requires  indeed 
that  we  should  come  to  Him,  that  we  should 
leave  off  sinning,  accuse  ourselves  at  His 
feet,  and  promise  to  sin  no  more.  Less  than 
this  He  could  not  ask,  and  no  more  than 
this  He  requires  of  the  greatest  sinner. 
He  thereby  puts  us  upon  the  "law  of 
liberty,"  of  which  St.  James  writes,  "  So 
speak  ye,  and  so  do  as  being  to  be  judged  by 
the  law  of  liberty."*  He  puts  us  upon  proba- 
tion of  our  gratitude,  generosity,  and  love. 
He  pardons  us  at  once,  even  before  we  fulful 
our  penance.  Our  absolution  does  not  de- 
pend upon  its  fulfilment;  and  the  little 
penance  we  perform  He  not  only  accepts 
but  elevates  to  a  higher  order,  and  invests 
with  a  great  efficiency.  In  this  way  He 
appeals  to  our  generosity.  His  own  gene- 
rosity upbraids  us.  If  He  be  so  generous 
to  us,  what  ought  we  be  to  Him  ? 

And,  finally,  it  inspires  by  the  grace  of 
the  holy  Spirit  a  desire  to  offer  ourselves  to 
Him  in  reparation.  What  is  past  we  can- 
not  undo.  What  remains  then  but  for  the 

*  St.  James,  ii.  12. 

G 


90  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

future  to  love  Him  with  generosity,  and  to 
give  to  Him  not  the  fruit  only,  but  the  tree 
with  the  fruit,  that  is  ourselves,  our  souls 
and  bodies,  to  be  a  "  living  sacrifice  pleas- 
ing unto  God  ;"*  and  for  this  we  have  many 
motives.  First,  because  of  our  sins ;  next, 
for  the  sin  of  those  whom  we  have  tempted: 
again,  for  the  sins  of  all,  more  especially 
Christians  and  Catholics,  and  finally,  for 
the  Passion  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Lastly,  the  spirit  of  reparation  has  a 
great  reward,  not  only  in  the  life  to  come, 
but  also  in  this.  None  are  so  peaceful,  so 
free,  so  happy,  as  the  generous.  The  nar- 
row-hearted are  always  scrupulous  and  in 
bondage  to  themselves.  They  have,  as  St. 
Thomas  of  Villanova  says,  "  Intellectum  in 
coelo,  voluntatem  in  coeno " — they  are 
drawn  up  by  high  visions  and  by  the  intel- 
lectual perception  of  the  blessedness  of  a 
devoted  and  holy  life;  but  they  are  also 
drawn  down  by  the  soft,  alluring,  and  fool- 
ish attachments  of  taste,  custom,  fancy,  and 
the  fear  of  the  world;  and  between  these 

*  Rom.  xii.  1. 


OF   REPARATION.  91 

two  they  waver  and  are  distracted,  and 
suffer  a  perpetual  strain  like  men  upon  the 
rack.  None  are  more  restless  and  depressed, 
than  people  who  take  their  full  liberty  in 
all  things  which  are  not  sin.  They  are 
always  wishing  for  the  higher,  and  falling 
into  the  lower,  path.  They  begin  with 
courage  to  choose  the  better  and  the  nobler 
part,  and  they  end  in  a  cowardice  which 
makes  them  shrink  from  the  least  denial  of 
their  own  will,  or  limitation  of  their  own 
liberty.  They  shrink  with  fear  from  an 
austere  life,  and  yet  know  that  lax  lives  are 
always  uneasy  and  unsafe. 

Happy  are  they  who  can  make  up  their 
mind.  The  decided  are  always  calm ;  even 
in  the  midst  of  trouble  they  know  their 
path,  and  their  way  is  clear  before  them. 
They  who  generously  choose  the  higher  and 
austerer  life,  enter  into  a  great  peace.  It 
is  sweet,  because  it  is  chosen  for  Jesus'  sake. 
At  first,  they  shrink  perhaps  from  natural  in- 
firmity, and  the  will  fears  what  the  light 
of  faith  dictates,  and  what  its  own  choice 
decides.  But  the  Holy  Ghost  is  a  generous 


92  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Spirit,  and  never  calls  a  soul  to  higher 
paths,  without  elevating  the  will  freely  and 
generously  to  choose  them.  The  Cross  be- 
comes sweet  when  it  is  chosen,  and  light 
when  it  is  lifted  on  the  shoulder. 

If  the  life  of  the  generous  he  happy  their 
death  is  blessed.  The  time  of  their  weak- 
ness is  the  time  of  His  power ;  when  they 
sink  under  the  burden  of  mortality,  then  is 
the  hour  of  His  special  generosity,  and  of 
their  ineffable  consolation. 

And  yet,  not  only  in  life  and  death,  but 
most  of  all,  the  reward  of  the  generous  is 
laid  up  for  them  in  Purgatory.  The  spirit 
of  reparation  gives  to  their  penance  a  won- 
derful power  of  expiation.  A  few  years  of 
loving  sorrow,  with  gratitude  and  self- 
chastisement,  will  expiate  we  know  not 
what  debt  of  pain.  The  more  penance  here 
the  less  Purgatory  hereafter.  Immediately 
after  death  S.  Peter  of  Alcantara  was  seen 
ascending  with  great  glory  into  Heaven, 
and  out  of  the  midst  of  his  joy  he  said  : 
"  See  how  great  a  glory  a  few  years  of 
penance  bring."  Nor  is  generosity  reserved 


OF   REPARATION.  93 

for  Saints.  Mary  Magdalen  is  the  type  of 
generous  sorrow.  A  heroic  act  not  only  of 
martyrdom  but  of  reparation  is  enough  to 
absolve  all  guilt  and  to  expiate  all  pain. 
In  the  life  of  St.  Vincent  Ferrer  we  read  of 
a  great  and  habitual  sinner  who  at  last  made 
his  confession  to  him.  It  was  a  terrible  life 
of  long  and  complicated  wickedness.  When 
the  penitent  expected  long  years  of  morti- 
fication and  heavy  penances,  St.  Vincent 
bade  him  fast  every  Friday  for  a  year.  The 
penitent  begged  him  not  to  trifle  with  a  case 
so  desperate  as  his,  believing  that  the  Saint 
was  speaking  in  irony.  St.  Vincent  com- 
muted the  penance  to  the  seven  penitential 
psalms.  Once  more  the  penitent  begged 
him  not  to  treat  him  with  levity.  The 
Saint  then  bade  him  say  once  a  Pater,  Ave, 
and  Gloria.  And  that  night  the  penitent 
sinner  died,  and  the  Saint  saw  him  in 
vision  ascending  to  the  heavenly  glory. 
The  love  of  God  had  broken  up  the  foun- 
tains of  love  and  sorrow  in  his  heart,  and 
his  nature  gave  way  under  the  compassion 
of  Jesus.  The  agony  of  his  self-accusation, 


94  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

and  the  will  to  expiate,  had  made  a  perfect 
reparation  for  the  sins  of  a  life. 

And,  lastly,  those  little  privations  of  a 
generous  love  will  receive  from  His  hands  a 
great  reward.  There  is  no  humility  and 
less  generosity  in  saying,  "  If  only  I  can  be 
saved  I  shall  be  content."  Our  salvation  is 
not  the  final  end  of  our  being,  but  His 
glory  ;  and  if  we  aim  at  being  saved  at  the 
least  glory  to  our  Redeemer,  we  may  easily 
lose  our  souls.  For  what  is  the  greater 
crown  ?  It  is  -not  the  visible  splendour  of 
Heavenly  Court,  but  the  internal  and  essen- 
tial glory  of  the  Saints.  It  is  to  be  nearer 
to  Him,  to  know  Him  more  fully,  to  be  more 
like  to  him,  and  to  love  Him  with  a  more 
ardent  and  eternal  love.  And  this  is  mea- 
sured by  our  state  in  this  life,  for  glory  is 
but  grace  made  perfect,  the  fruit  of  the 
blossom  which  now  is.  This  is  the  thought 
which,  out  of  the  feeble  and  fearful,  has 
made  martyrs,  confessors,  penitents,  mission- 
aries, priests,  and  nuns.  The  highest  aspi- 
rations are  often  united  with  the  weakest 
natures.  Our  natural  infirmity  shrinks 


OF   REPARATION.  95 

when  our  will  is  inflexible.  Jesus  in  His 
agony  is  the  example  of  what  they  have  to 
endure  who  make  satisfaction  for  sin  to  God, 
and  He  shows  us  that  our  suffering  does 
not  take  away  from  the  perfection  of  our 
submission  or  our  sacrifice.  They  whom 
Jesus  calls  to  martyrdom  suffer  and  exult: 
their  lower  nature  is  wounded  with  ineffable 
pain,  but  their  higher  is  in  the  foretaste  of 
the  Beatific  Vision.  All  who  have  confessed 
Jesus  before  men  have  had  to  suffer  shame 
arid  sorrow,  but  they  chose  it  with  gladness 
for  His  sake.  Penitents  have  abandoned 
all  that  was  dearest  to  them  with  joy  not  to 
be  told  for  the  sweetness  of  making  repara- 
tion to  him.  Sons  have  left  their  home 
and  all  its  charities,  dear  as  life,  to  expiate, 
as  missionaries  among  the  heathen,  the  sins 
of  a  life  not  soiled  by  a  mortal  sin.  Youths 
have  with  gladness  forsaken  the  world  and 
all  its  hopes  to  take  the  solitary  yoke  of 
Jesus  in  the  sacerdotal  life.  Daughters,  to 
whom  all  affections  ministered,  have  turned 
from  all  to  serve  Him  in  a  cloister,  or  in  a 
rude  and  exposed  life  among  the  souls  for 


96          PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT,   ETC. 

which  He  died ;  and  yet  all  these  have  had 
moments  of  irresolution  and  fear,  of  shrink- 
ing, and  relapse,  in  which  nothing  saved 
them  fron  falling  from  their  higher  aspira- 
tions, and  losing  the  vocation  of  God,  but 
the  one  deep,  still,  but  constraining  thought, 
sweet  and  persuasive,  that  to  choose  the  lot 
which  Jesus  chose  on  earth,  would  be  more 
pleasing  to  the  Sacred  Heart  of  their  Master 
and  their  Lord.  This  one  thought  of  gene- 
rous love  to  Him,  who  has  done  all  for  us, 
for  whom  we  can  do  nothing,  who,  never- 
theless, accepts  the  nothing  we  do,  and  by 
working  "  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  accom- 
plish,"* gives  it  a  power  of  reparation.  This 
alone  has  made  the  earth  to  blossom  like  the 
rose  and  the  lily,  and  has  illuminated  the 
Church  with  the  lights  of  sanctity,  and 
brought  the  multitude,  whom  no  man  can 
number,  to  the  throne  of  Jesus,  and  to  His 
Eternal  joy. 

*  Phil.  ii.  13. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    SACRAMENT    OP   PENANCE   THE    SACRA- 
MENT  OF  PERSEVERANCE. 

OUR  Divine  Lord  has  said,  "  He  that  shall 
persevere  unto  the  end  he  shall  be  saved,"* 
which  is  also  to  say,  and  no  other  shall. 
Twice  He  declared  this  truth  in  words, 
which  thrill  and  awe  us  to  read  them. 
"  No  man  putting  his  hand  to  the  plough, 
and  looking  back,  is  fit  for  the  Kingdom  of 
God"t  —  and  again,  "  Remember  Lot's 
wife."t  God  has  revealed  to  us  the  history 
of  His  elect,  running  down  from  the  crea- 
tion through  the  ages  of  grace :  but  all 
along  the  line,  and  beside  it,  as  a  parallel, 
runs  the  history  of  those  that  have  fallen. 
Every  state  and  order  of  His  servants  has 
the  witness  of  instability  in  itself.  Of  the 

*  St.  Matt.  x.  22.  t  St.  Luke,  ix.  62, 

J  St.  Luke,  xvii.  32. 


98  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Holy  Angels  created  in  the  nearest  likeness 
of  their  Maker,  and  placed  upon  the  steps 
of  the  throne  of  God,  multitudes  fell  into 
eternal  death.  Of  his  elect  people,  the 
Apostle  writes,  "  I  would  not  have  you 
ignorant,  brethren,  that  our  fathers  were  all 
under  the  cloud,  and  all  passed  through  the 
sea  ;  and  all  in  Moses  were  baptized  in  the 
cloud  and  in  the  sea  ;  and  did  all  eat  the 
same  spiritual  food,  and  all  drank  the  same 
spiritual  drink  (and  they  drank  of  the  spiri- 
tual rock  that  followed  them,  and  the  rock 
was  Christ).  But  with  the  most  of  them 
God  was  not  well  pleased  :  for  they  were 
overthrown  in  the  desert."*  Prophets  also 
have  fallen.  Balaam,  in  the  midst  of  the 
Divine  visitations,  perished  among  the 
enemies  of  God.  Seers  likewise  fell,  as 
Solomon,  wisest  of  men  ;  and  Apostles,  as 
Judas  ;  and  Christians  in  the  first  grace  of 
their  regeneration,  as  Ananias  and  Sapphira. 
The  annals  of  the  Church  are  full  of  such 
warnings.  The  line  of  heresiarchs  is  a  long 
history  of  the  forfeiture  of  grace.  And  in 

*  1  Cor.  x.  1,  5. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  99 

•the  lives  of  the  Saints  the  same  examples  of 
perseverance  and  of  falling  are  found  side 
by  side.  In  the  Franciscan  Chronicles,  to 
give  one  instance  for  many,  we  read  of  a 
Brother  Justin  who  renounced  the  world, 
high  honours,  and  great  employments,  to 
become  a  religious.  His  progress  in  the 
life  of  perfection  was  so  great,  that  he  was 
visited  with  raptures  in  prayer  and  many 
supernatural  favours.  His  brethren  counted 
him  a  saint.  He  went  to  Home  in  the  time 
of  Eugenius  IV.,  who  received  him  with 
great  veneration,  would  not  let  him  kiss  his 
feet,  but  embraced  him,  made  him  sit  at  his 
side,  and  bestowed  many  privileges  upon 
him.  All  this  awakened  pride,  and  turned 
his  head.  When  he  went  back  to  his  con- 
vent St.  John  Capistrano  said  to  him  : 
"  You  went  an  angel,  you  are  come  back  a 
devil."  Soon  after  this  he  fell  into  great 
private  sins  and  open  breaches  of  the  public 
law.  He  died  in  prison.  These  examples 
teach  one  truth  :  all  depends  on  perse- 
verance. Without  this  nothing  avails.  The 
grace,  and  perfection,  and  splendour  of  the 


100    PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT 

angels  could  not  save  them.  The  election 
of  Israel,  the  miracles  in  Egypt,  the  manna 
in  the  wilderness,  were  all  in  vain.  The 
converse  with  God,  the  resistance  of  an 
angel,  availed  nothing  for  Balaam.  The 
illumination  which  laid  open  the  natural 
and  supernatural  worlds  to  Solomon,  did 
not  profit  him.  The  daily  fellowship  with 
Jesus,  His  doctrines  and  miracles,  and  three 
years  of  His  presence,  did  not  save  Judas. 
The  gift  of  regeneration  and  of  the  Sacra- 
ments of  grace  were  all  in  vain  to  Ananias 
and  Sapphira.  All  alike  lacked  one  thing, 
and  that  one  thing  lacking  lost  them  all 
things.  They  had  not  perseverance,  and 
though  they  had  everything  else,  nothing 
without  this  was  of  any  avail. 

It  remains  therefore  to  show  what  perse- 
verance is,  and  how  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance  infuses  and  sustains  it.  First,  as 
to  the  nature  of  perseverance.  Theologians 
distinguish  it  into  the  active  and  the  passive 
perseverance.  The  active  is  a  virtue  on 
our  part,  the  passive  a  gift  on  the  part  of 
God. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  101 

The  active  perseverance  consists,  first,  in 
our  fidelity  to  the  grace  God  has  bestowed 
upon  us,  that  is,  in  corresponding  with  the 
light  of  faith  in  the  intellect,  with  the  im- 
pulses of  charity  in  the  heart,  and  the 
inspirations  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  will, 
in  surrendering  ourselves  with  a  filial  and 
watchful  promptness  to  the  operations  and 
calls  of  God  in  the  soul ;  secondly,  it  consists 
in  fervour,  which  is  not  so  much  any  ardent 
affection,  or  vehement  emotion  of  the  heart, 
as  a  constant  devotion  of  the  will.  Fervour 
is  made  up  of  three  things,  first,  regularity 
in  all  duties  in  the  order  and  habit  of  the 
interior  life  ;  secondly,  in  punctuality  in 
doing  all  things  in  season,  at  the  right  time 
or  in  the  right  way ;  and  lastly,  exactness 
in  doing  all  things  as  perfectly  as  we  can, 
remembering  for  whom  we  do  them;  and  that 
the  greatest  actions,  if  done  ill,  and  without 
this  motive,  are  as  nothing,  and  that  the 
least  actions  are  great  if  done  perfectly  and 
for  God.  * 

And,  thirdly,  perseverance  springs  from 
delicacy  of  conscience,  which  consists  in  the 


102    PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT 

vividness  and  sensitiveness  of  the  heart,  and 
in  the  promptness  and  activity  of  the  will 
under  the  operations  of  grace.  The  Fathers 
say,  "  Res  delicata  Spiritus  Sarictus,"  be- 
cause his  purity,  love,  and  patience,  are 
grieved  even  with  things  of  which  our 
dulness  makes  little  account.  So  I  may 
say  a  pure  conscience  has  delicate  sense 
derived  from  the  Holy  Spirit  Himself,  and 
in  harmony  with  all  His  operations  ;  so 
that  as  soon  as  He  moves  the  conscience 
answers,  as  kindred  notes  vibrate,  or  as  the 
leaves  incline  before  the  motion  of  the  air, 
and  the  sea  undulates  under  the  presence  of 
the  lightest  wind. 

This  is  the  essence  of  perseverance  on 
our  part,  and  from  this  internal  state  come 
the  acts  of  obedience,  penance,  mortification, 
expiation,  reparation,  constancy,  fortitude, 
self-sacrifice,  and  endurance  to  the  end, 
which  constitutes  what  we  call  final  per- 
severance. 

But  it  is  certain  that  without  the  passive 
perseverance,  which  is  a  gift  on  God's  part, 
no  one  will  so  persevere  to  the  end.  The 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  103 

Holy  Council  of  Trent  teaches  that  no  man 
without  a  special  privilege  of  grace  will 
avoid  all  sin.*  Not  that  it  is  physically  im- 
possible, but  only  morally  certain.  It  is  phy- 
sically possible,  that  of  a  thousand  arrows 
shot  at  a  mark  every  one  may  strike  ;  but 
it  is  morally  certain  that  many  will  fall 
short,  pass  beyond,  or  swerve  aside.  There 
is  abstractedly  no  intrinsic  impossibility  in 
this,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  wandering  of 
the  eye,  or  the  unsteadiness  of  the  hand,  or 
the  motions  of  the  air,  or  the  wavering  of 
the  will,  or  some  other  cause,  will  hinder 
the  flight  and  the  aim  of  many  in  every 
thousand  shafts.  So  it  is  in  our  co-operation 
with  grace.  Lights,  visitations,  inspirations, 
come  down  upon  us  like  showers,  but  it  is 
only  a  few  among  many  with  which  we  cor- 
respond ;  or  if  we  correspond,  it  is  in  an 
inadequate  proportion.  We  receive  grace 
as  a  hundred,  and  we  correspond  as  twenty, 
or  we  receive  as  twenty,  and  correspond  as 
one.  The  waste  of  nature,  which  is  always 
sowing  the  world  broad-cast,  on  sea  and 

*  Cone.  Trid.  Sess.  vi.  Can.  23. 


104          PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

land,  on  mountain  and  rock,  with  seeds, 
every  one  of  which  has  life  and  fruitfulness 
in  it,  is  a  true  analogy  to  the  waste  of  grace 
which  inundates  us,  and  passes  unheeded 
away. 

If,  then,  there  were  not  another  special 
grace  of  perseverance  by  which  God,  in  His 
free  sovereign  mercy  sustains  us,  no  soul 
should  be  saved.  And,  yet,  that  grace  can- 
not be  merited  by  us.  God  has  not  pro- 
mised to  bestow  it  on  anything  we  do. 
There  is  no  proportion,  or  link  established 
by  His  promise  between  our  perseverance 
and  this  surpassing  gift.  It  is  to  the  end 
His  free  and  sovereign  grace.  The  first 
grace  and  the  last,  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega 
of  our  salvation  are  in  His  hand  alone.  No 
man  can  merit  regeneration,  which  is  the 
first  grace  in  our  salvation  :  nor  the  last, 
without  which  regeneration  is  all  in  vain. 
God  holds  the  first  link  and  the  last  of  the 
golden  chain  of  grace  in  His  own  hand,  and 
bestows  it  on  whom  He  will.  We  may  pray 
for  it  but  we  cannot  merit  it ;  we  may  dis- 
pose ourselves  to  receive  it,  but  we  can 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  105 

never  claim  it  at  His  hand.  It  is  bestowed 
upon  us  out  of  pure  love  and  grace,  through 
the  prayers  and  merits  of  His  Saints,  out  of 
the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  who  has  pur- 
chased it  for  us  in  His  most  Precious 
Blood. 

It  is  easy  then  to  see  how  both  the  virtue 
and  the  gift  of  perseverance  is  to  be  lost. 
One  mortal  sin  destroys  it  utterly.  The 
Prophet  Ezechiel  warns  even  the  just  of 
their  danger  of  falling:  "If  the  just  man 
turn  himself  away  from  his  justice,  and  do 
iniquity — shall  he  live  ?  all  his  justices 
which  he  hath  done  shall  not  be  remembered, 
in  the  prevarication  by  which  he  hath  pre- 
varicated, and  in  his  sin,  which  he  hath 
committed,  in  them  he  shall  die."*  All 
that  he  has  been,  or  has  done,  or  has  suf- 
fered, in  one  moment  is  lost.  And  for  such 
a  fall  we  generally  prepare  ourselves  by  a 
multitude  of  lesser  faults.  Satan  seldom 
tempts  the  just  to  a  mortal  sin  all  at  once. 
The  shock  of  the  temptation  itself  would 
arouse  them  to  watchfulness.  "  He  that 

*  Ezechiel,  xviii.  24. 

H 


106     PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT 

contemneth  small  things  shall  fall  by  little 
and  little."*  It  is  by  little  ruining  temp- 
tations,  which  wear  and  fret  away  the 
integrity  and  firmness  of  the  will,  that  he 
begins  his  assault.  He  leads  men  into  the 
occasions  of  lesser  faults,  and  so  by  degrees 
deadens  the  hatred  and  the  very  fear  of  sin, 
and  inspires  a  boldness  to  venture  where 
before  they  would  not  have  dared  to  go. 
Then  come  strong  attractions,  facinations, 
and  entanglements,  and  last  of  all  the 
Tempter's  hour  is  come. 

And  for  such  a  fall  he  prepares  by  in- 
spiring a  presumption  of  our  own  strength. 
"  Contritionem  pracedit  superbia."  Pride 
goeth  before  destruction.!  We  confide  in 
our  own  lights  even  those  which  are  internal 
and  supernatural,  and  in  our  own  spiritual 
attainments  as  if  they  were  our  own.  This 
is  what  is  called  the  "  storm  in  the  harbour," 
the  whirlwind  which  comes  down  upon  the 
soul  when  it  has  escaped  out  of  the  sea  into 
the  calm  water  of  the  haven,  the  perdition 
which  falls  upon  the  soul  after  it  has  found 

*  Ecclus.  xix.  1.        t  Prov.  xvi.  18. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  107 

peace  with  God,  and  is  anchored  to  the 
eternal  shore.  That  which  chiefly  brings 
on  this  great  and  subtle  danger  is  a  secret 
neglect  of  prayer,  a  weariness  and  aversion 
from  speaking  with  God,  and  this  again 
begins  in  a  loss  of  fervour  and  punctuality 
in  devotion,  and  this  loss  arises  from  some 
secret  infidelity  of  the  heart  which  brings 
films  over  it  and  shadows  of  fear,  so  that 
the  light  and  warmth  of  the  Divine  Presence 
is  at  first  slightly  veiled  as  by  a  mist,  and 
then  is  hid  so  that  we  lose  the  consciousness 
of  it,  and  the  holy  fear  which  it  inspires  and 
keeps  alive.  The  true  cause  of  those  pre- 
paratory and  secret  falls  is  some  interior  sin 
of  the  heart  known  only  to  God  and  to  our- 
selves. The  world  has  dim  eyes  and  can 
only  see  external  sins,  and  even  of  these 
only  such  as  blot  the  life  outwardly.  But 
the  external  act  does  not  constitute  the  sin. 
The  sin  is  perfect  already  in  the  internal 
act  of  the  heart  by  the  knowledge  of  the 
understanding  and  the  consent  of  the  will. 
This  is  the  essential  malice  of  sin  to  which 
the  external  act  adds  only  an  accidental 


108     TENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT 

increase,  and  the  sin  of  scandal.  In  this 
way  men  prepare  themselves  long  before. 
It  may  be  for  years  they  stand  to  all  appear- 
ance in  flower  and  fruit  ;  but  like  trees 
which  have  a  decay  at  the  heart,  they  go  at 
last  in  a  sudden  wind,  and  all  men  wonder 
at  their  fall  till  it  lays  open  their  heart,  and 
then  men  wonder  that  they  stood  so  long 
and  did  not  come  down  long  ago. 

And  this  shows  further  how  our  perseve- 
rance is  to  be  sustained.  First,  and  above  all, 
by  a  habitual  consciousness  of  the  love  of 
God,  through  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus 
working  upon  our  hearts,  humbling,  soften- 
ing, and  kindling  them  with  love  in  return. 
This  consciousness  that  we  are  objects  of 
the  love  of  God,  this  sense  of  a  personal 
relation,  and  personal  friendship  with  the 
Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus,  is  to  the  soul  what 
the  sun,  with  its  ardour  and  splendour,  is 
to  the  seeds  and  to  the  fruits  of  the  earth. 
It  quickens,  vivifies,  unfolds,  ripens,  perfects 
everything.  To  doubt  of  God's  love  brings 
winter  into  the  soul ;  to  feel  it  feebly  and 
faintly  is  as  the  cloudy  and  churlish  sky 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  109 

which  hinders  the  ripening  influence  of  the 
light.  In  darkness  all  things  pale  and  die. 
If  only  we  can  live  in  an  habitual  sense  of 
our  perfect  pardon  and  absolution,  through 
the  most  Precious  Blood  of  Jesus,  of  His 
friendship  for  us  and  our  discipleship  to 
Him,  of  His  perpetual  presence,  love,  and 
care,  we  shall  have  the  root  of  perseverance 
firmly  fixed  in  our  will,  and  for  this  we 
need  no  great  learning,  no  mystical,  no  dog- 
matical theology.  A  childlike  heart  is 
enough.  Among  the  martyrs  of  Cochin 
China,  in  these  last  years,  was  a  simple 
Catechumen.  The  heathen  scorned  him  for 
his  ignorance,  and  mocked  him  for  his  ina- 
bility to  answer  their  objections  against  the 
nature  of  God,  and  for  his  obstinacy  in  dying 
for  a  God  about  whom  he  could  give  no 
account.  He  answered  :  "  In  a  family  of 
many  children  some  are  grown  to  mature 
intelligence,  some  are  growing  to  youth, 
some  are  infants,  all  love  their  Father,  but 
all  do  not  know  Him  equally.  The  elder 
can  give  an  account  of  Him,  of  His  cha- 
racter, and  of  the  reasons  why  they  love 


110  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Him,  but  the  infants  know  neither  His  cha- 
racter nor  His  name.  All  that  they  know- 
is  that  He  is  their  Father,  and  that  He 
loves  them,  and  this  is  their  reason  for 
loving  Him  in  return,  and  trusting  Him 
with  all  their  heart."  Such  is  the  true 
childlike  love  of  God,  the  basis  and  the 
crown  of  our  perseverance. 

The  next  support  of  our  perseverance  is 
a  true  knowledge  of  ourselves.  There  are 
few  more  thrilling  words  in  Holy  Scripture 
than  these  :  "  There  are  just  men  and  wise 
men,  and  their  works  are  in  the  hand  of 
God,  and  yet  man  knoweth  not  whether  he 
be  worthy  of  love  or  hatred."*  That  is,  in 
the  searching  eyes  of  God  we  are  so  unlike 
what  we  are  in  the  twilight  of  our  own, 
that,  whatsoever  judgment  we  may  have  of 
ourselves,  God  may  all  the  while  judge  of 
us  far  otherwise.  This  salutary  fear  of 
deceiving  ourselves  by  too  kind  an  opinion 
of  our  own  state  is  the  first  condition  of  self- 
knowledge.  Until  we  are  willing  to  believe 
that  we  are  probably  far  more  sinful  than 

*  Eccles.  ix.  1. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  Ill 

we  have  ever  known,  or  suspected,  we  shall 
make  no  great  progress  in  self-knowledge. 
We  have  to  learn  not  only  our  sins,  but, 
as  we  have  seen,  our  personal  sirifulness, 
our  un worth! ness,  our  unprofitableness,  our 
littleness,  and  our  weakness. 

And  this  will  bring  us  another  support 
by  a  growing  contrition,  ripening  into  com- 
punction ;  and  this  cancels  our  venial  sins, 
reconciles  the  heart  with  God,  brings  down 
great  grace,  and  unites  the  will  with  the 
will  of  Jesus.  And  from  contrition  springs 
the  spirit  of  reparation,  a  generous  desire  to 
make  atonement  to  the  Sacred  Heart  which 
has  loved  men  so  much,  and  has  been  loved 
so  little.  A  spirit  of  reparation  draws  great 
graces  from  the  Sacred  Heart,  and  engages 
all  its  generosity  in  our  salvation.  These 
four  things,  love,  self-knowledge,  contrition, 
and  reparation,  with  a  continual  infusion  of 
grace  to  repair  the  continual  decays  of  every 
day,  are  all  we  need  to  sustain  this  active 
perseverance  on  our  part.  But  these  four 
graces  are  especially  those  which,  as  I  have 
shown,  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  infuses 


112  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

and  perfects  in  us.  It  is  therefore  the  Sa- 
cramerit  of  Perseverance,  arid  the  means  of 
preparing  ourselves  to  receive  of  God  the 
free  grace  of  His  Sovereign  mercy,  the  gift 
of  passive  perseverance.  Such  is  the  outline 
of  the  subject  I  undertook  to  speak  of,  arid 
with  a  few  words  more  I  shall  conclude.  I 
will  then  only  add  four  simple  rules  to  ob- 
tain this  great  gift  of  God. 

1.  First,  use  the  Sacrament  of  Penance 
fully  and  generously.  Pour  out  your  hearts 
like  water.  They  that  so  come  oftenest  to 
it  are  the  most  confirmed  in  perseverance, 
and  they  who  are  most  confirmed  in  perse- 
verance are  they  who  oftenest  come  to  it. 
According  as  we  use  it,  so  it  will  be  to  us. 
Happy  are  they  who  come  month  by  month, 
happier  they  who  come  week  by  week. 
They  who  come  seldom  to  confession,  wonder 
what  others  can  have  to  say  who  come  so 
often.  But  they  who  come  seldom  have 
always  least  to  say,  because  they  have  least 
self-knowledge.  They  who  come  often,  as 
their  self-knowledge  increases,  find  a  greater 
facility  arid  a  greater  desire  to  come  oftener. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  113 

Many  of  the  Saints,  as  St.  Charles,  confessed 
every  day.  We  wonder  what  they  could 
find  to  accuse  themselves  of.  It  was  because 
they  were  Saints  that  they  saw  so  much 
where  we  see  so  little.  If  we  had  more  of 
the  supernatural  light  of  the  Sacrament  of 
Penance,  we  too  should  see  as  they  did  ; 
but  to  obtain  this  spiritual  discernment, 
habitual  and  frequent  confession  is  neces- 
sary. 

2.  Next,  be  always  beginning.  Never 
think  that  you  can  relax,  or  that  you  have 
attained  the  end.  St.  Francis  used  to  say 
continually  to  his  brothers,  "  My  brethren, 
let  us  begin  to  love  God  a  little."  He  felt 
that  he  was  only  at  the  outset  of  the  way  of 
perfection,  a  mere  beginner  in  the  science  of 
God.  If  we  think  ourselves  to  be  more,  it 
is  because  we  are  less.  If  we  think  our- 
selves more  than  beginners,  it  is  a  sign  that 
we  have  hardly  yet  begun.  There  is  no 
security  for  perseverance  except  in  always 
advancing.  To  stand  still  is  impossible.  A 
boat,  ascending  a  running  stream,  falls  back 
as  soon  as  it  ceases  to  advance.  To  hold  its 


114  PENANCE   THE    SACRAMENT 

place  is  impossible,  unless  it  gain  upon  the 
stream.  So  in  the  spiritual  life.  The  past 
is  no  guarantee  for  the  future.  All  the 
justice  of  the  just  man  is  gone  in  the  day  in 
which  he  falls,  and  all  his  past  obedience  is 
no  security  against  present  transgression. 
Our  Lord,  therefore,  warns  us  to  "  remem- 
ber Lot's  wife."  She  was  saved  by  the  visi- 
tation of  Angels,  drawn  forth  from  destruc- 
tion by  the  constraint  of  an  Angel's  hand. 
She  was  halfway  to  safety  when  she  looked 
back,  and  was  cut  off  by  the  just  judgment 
of  God.  The  past  availed  nothing.  Only 
present  fidelity  from  moment  to  moment  is 
security  for  the  future.  Therefore,  again, 
our  Divine  Lord  said,  "No  man  putting  his 
hand  to  the  plough  and  looking  back,  is  fit 
for  the  kingdom  of  God,"*  that  is,  the  hus- 
bandman who  turns  in  the  furrow  to  look 
at  his  past  work,  and  lingers  over  his  toil, 
shall  never  reach  the  end  of  the  field.  What 
we  have  done  as  yet  is  little  compared  with 
what  remains  to  do.  We  have  to  perfect 
our  sanctification,  which  even  in  Saints  is 

*  St.  Luke,  ix.  62. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  115 

far  off.  We  have  to  expiate  the  pains  due 
to  a  world  of  sins,  surpassing  all  memory, 
and  as  yet  we  have  but  little  chastised  our- 
selves. We  have  to  complete  the  chain  of 
graces  by  which  we  are  bound  to  the  eternal 
throne,  and  many  links  are  still  wanting. 
There  is  no  time  to  lose.  Let  us  hear  how 
an  Apostle  speaks  of  perseverance:  "Bre- 
thren, I  do  not  count  myself  to  have  appre- 
hended. But  one  thing  I  do  :  forgetting 
the  things  that  are  behind,  and  stretching 
forth  myself  to  those  that  are  before,  I  press 
towards  the  mark,  to  the  prize  of  the  super- 
nal vocation  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus."* 

"  Know  you  not  that  they  that  run  in  a 
race,  all  run  indeed,  but  one  receiveth  the 
prize  ?  So  run  that  you  may  obtain.  And 
every  one  that  striveth  for  the  mastery, 
refraineth  himself  from  all  things  :  and  they 
indeed,  that  they  may  receive  a  corruptible 
crown  :  but  we  an  incorruptible  one.  I 
therefore  so  run,  not  as  at  any  uncertainty : 
I  so  fight,  not  as  one  beating  the  air:  But 
I  chastise  my  body  and  bring  it  into  sub- 

*  Phil.  iii.  13,  14. 


116  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

jection:  lest  perhaps,  when  I  have  preached 
to  others,  I  myself  should  become  a  cast- 
away."* 

If  St.  Paul  had  need  so  to  speak,  how 
much  more  such  as  we  ?  If  all  his  super- 
natural grace,  his  miraculous  conversion, 
and  singular  vocation,  his  perils  by  land  and 
by  sea,  his  labours  and  fasting,  visions  and 
revelations,  if  in  these  there  was  no  security 
that  he  might  not  even  become  a  reprobate, 
how  much  more  cause  have  we  to  live  and 
die  in  holy  fear  ?  This  then  is  the  second 
support  of  perseverance. 

3.  Thirdly,  meditate  every  day  upon  the 
fall  of  those  who  begun  well.  Once  perhaps 
they  set  out  with  as  fair  a  hope  of  eternal 
life  as  we  have.  Their  childhood  and  youth 
was  it  may  be  holier  and  nearer  to  God  than 
ours.  A  bright  sunshine  and  a  fair  morn- 
ing gave  promise  of  a  noontide  of  ripeness 
and  an  evening  of  peace.  Perhaps  they 
persevered  as  long,  or  longer  than  we  have 
yet,  and  that  against  many  dangers  and 
temptations.  At  last  they  fell.  Their  be- 

*  1  Cor.  ix.  24,  7. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  117 

ginning  :was  like  ours,  and  our  end  may  be 
like  theirs.  An  awful  and  thrilling  truth. 
It  is  good  to  have  it  always  before  our  eyes. 
For  instance,  the  fall  of  the  Angels  may 
teach  us  that  no  gift,  or  perfection  of  grace 
will  avail  us  if  we  lack  stability.  They 
were  created  in  excellence  of  knowledge  and 
strength,  both  natural  and  supernatural, 
but  they  sinned,  and  what  was  their  sin  but 
pride,  of  which  we  have  been  guilty  a  thou- 
sand times.  They  desired  to  be  as  God ; 
not  that  they  aspired  to  His  immensity,  or 
infinity,  or  eternity,  for  the  angelic  intelli- 
gence is  too  perfect  and  too  luminous  for 
such  a  folly  ;  but  they  desired  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  God.  They  contemplated  their 
own  proper  excellence  till  they  became 
enamoured  by  self-love.  They  sought  to  be 
happy  in  themselves  by  their  own  proper 
and  natural  beatitude  ;  to  suffice  to  them- 
selves, and  to  be  blissful  without  God.  This 
was  their  sin,  and  what  is  it  but  the  pride 
which  is  the  sin  of  the  world,  as  St.  John 
calls  it,  "  the  pride  of  life."* 

*  1  St.  John,  ii.  16. 


118  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

We  may  also  meditate  on  the  fall  of 
Judas,  whose  example  is  nearer  to  us  than 
we  are  wont  to  imagine.  The  greatness  of 
his  sin  deceives  many.  We  believe  our- 
selves to  be  in  no  danger  of  such  a  guilt, 
and  we  forget  that  the  sin  of  Judas  had 
once  a  beginning  as  fair  as  the  sin  we  may 
be  committing  at  this  hour :  and  in  the  end 
we  may  fall  from  God  as  deliberately  as  he 
did.  It  is  a  very  awful  and  touching  thought 
that  Judas  was  once  an  innocent  child  like 
as  we  were  ;  that  he  was  the  object  of  a 
mother's  love,  as  tender  as  ever  we  have 
known  ;  that  perhaps  in  boyhood  he  may 
have  lived  in  the  holy  fear  of  the  God  of 
Israel  more  watchfully  than  ever  we  lived 
in  the  light  of  the  Holy  Trinity  ;  the  days 
of  his  youth  were  as  blameless  perhaps  as 
ours  ;  morning  and  evening  came  and  went, 
as  to  us,  with  their  joys  and  their  sorrows, 
their  fears  and  their  hopes  of  manhood,  and 
the  works  of  life.  All  that  we  know  is,  that 
he  was  called  to  be  an  Apostle — that  he 
obeyed  the  call.  So  far,  perhaps,  he  did 
more  than  we  have  done  in  corresponding 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  119 

with  grace.  In  this  grace  he  persevered,  in 
the  fellowship  of  Jesus,  sharing  in  His  toil 
and  weariness,  hunger  and  thirst,  shame  and 
contradiction.  He  heard  His  parables,  and 
saw  His  mighty  works  of  power.  What 
could  we  have  done  more?  "He  having 
the  purse,  carried  the  things  that  were  put 
therein  ;"*  and  the  sin  of  covetousness 
sprang  up  in  him.  But  the  seeds  of  it  are 
also  in  us.  His  office  led  him  into  the 
occasions  of  sin.  He  was  tempted,  and 
fell,  and  should  we  have  stood  firm  ?  He 
was  living  in  the  midst  of  all  that  ought  to 
have  sanctified  him,  without  being  sancti- 
fied by  it.  All  without  was  holy,  and 
ministered  grace  to  him  ;  but  within  there 
was  a  heart-sin  which  resisted  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  and  this  spiritual  contradiction 
gradually  threw  out  the  habit,  and  the 
design,  and  the  daring,  by  which  he  fell. 
He  had  seen  his  Master  again  and  again 
pass  unhurt  through  His  enemies.  They 
could  lay  no  hand  on  Him.  He  had  seen 
Him  do  works  of  mighty  power ;  how  could 

*  St.  John,  xii.  6. 


120     PENANCE  THE  SACRAMENT 

he  doubt  that  He  could  protect  Himself 
from  the  Pharisees  ?  What  harm  to  make 
money  where  no  ill  could  come  ?  Jesus 
could  protect  Himself,  and  so  he  sold  him 
for  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  not  doubting, 
perhaps,  that  the  Priests  and  the  Pharisees 
were  deluding  themselves.  For  we  read 
that  a  Judas  seeing  that  Jesus  was  con- 
demned,  repented  himself."*  It  was  a  new 
and  unexpected  result.  He  went  and  made 
restitution,  "casting  down  the  pieces  of 
silver  in  the  temple."  He  himself  confessed 
that  he  had  sinned  in  "  betraying  the  inno- 
cent blood."  Have  we  done  as  much  in 
many  a  fall  ?  And  driven  to  despair  at  the 
unforeseen  horror,  '•  he  went  and  hanged 
himself."  Judas  is  an  example  how  a  soul 
once  innocent  may  be  slowly  changed  into 
the  worst  sin,  and  even  at  last  fall  with 
little  intention  of  committing  the  whole  evil 
which  follows  from  its  act.  But  if  the 
example  of  Judas  be  far  off  from  many  of 
us,  the  fall  of  Demas  is  near  to  us  all.  We 
read  the  pathetic  words  of  St.  Paul : 

*  St.  Matt,  xxvii.  3,  4,  5. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  121 

"  Demas  hath  left  me  loving  this  world."* 
He  was  weary  of  the  apostolic  life ;  of 
journeying  by  land  and  by  water ;  of 
having  no  fixed  dwelling-place,  of  perils 
among  the  heathens,  and  perils  among  false 
brethren,  of  labours,  watchings,  and  fastings. 
Why  should  he  be  the  companion  of  Apos- 
tles ?  It  was  a  life  of  counsels  ;  the  life  of 
the  commandments  was  enough  for  such  as 
he.  How  fair  and  reasonable  all  this 
appears  ;  how  like  the  reasoning  and  the 
lives  of  many  at  this  day.  But  the  Apostle 
saw  deeper.  The  Holy  Ghost  reads  the 
heart.  Demas  "  loved  this  world  ;"  there- 
fore, and  for  no  other  reason,  he  forsook  the 
servants  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  departed  to 
Thessalonica.  Of  his  end  who  knows,  who 
can  know,  till  the  day  when  all  falls  shall 
be  revealed?  We  shall  then  know  what 
the  Apostle  said  with  tears  :  "  All  seek  the 
things  that  are  their  own  ;  not  the  things 
that  are  Jesus  Christ's."* 

Let  us   then   meditate   often   on   these 
things,  and  remember  that  falls   are   not 

*  2  Tim.  iv.  9.  t  Phil.  ii.  21. 


122  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

always  by  the  grosser  sins  which  the  world 
takes  count  of,  but  by  spiritual  sins,  subtle 
and  secret,  which  leave  no  stain  upon  the 
outward  life,  yet  are  perhaps  more  deadly 
because  more  satanic,  that  is,  more  like  the 
fall  of  angels. 

4.  And  lastly,  let  no  sun  go  down  with- 
out praying  for  the  gift  of  perseverance. 

Ask  it  every  day  of  the  ever-Blessed  Tri- 
nity :  ask  it  of  the  Eternal  Father,  of 
whom  our  Divine  Lord  had  said,  "  No  one 
can  snatch  them  out  of  the  hand  of  My 
Father."*  Ask  it  of  the  Eternal  Son  incar- 
nate, who  has  said,  u  All  that  the  Tather 
giveth  to  me  shall  come  to  Me,  and  him 
that  cometh  to  Me  I  will  not  cast  out."f 
Ask  it  also  of  the  Eternal  Spirit,  the  Holy 
Ghost,  for  our  Lord  has  also  said,  "  No  man 
can  come  to  me  except  the  Father  who 
hath  sent  Me  draw  him."t  It  is  by  the 
Holy  Ghost  which  proceedeth  from  the 
Father  and  the  Son  that  Jesus  fulfils  His 
promise.  "  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from 

*  St.  John,  x.  29.  t  Ib.  vi.  37. 

J  Ib.  vi.  44. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  123 

the  earth,  will  draw  all  things  to  myself."* 
This  is  the  gift  of  perseverance,  the  mani- 
fold grace  of  the  ever-Blessed  Trinity 
encompassing  us  without  and  penetrating 
and  sustaining  us  within,  and  upholding  us 
above  our  dangers,  and  ourselves.  Ask  it 
through  the  prayers  of  our  Blessed  Mother, 
the  Mother  of  God,  whose  immaculate  hands 
are  lifted  up  day  and  night  before  the  Sacred 
Heart  of  her  Son  to  obtain  our  salvation ; 
and  finally,  ask  it  through  the  prayers  of 
our  guardian  Angel,  who  has  kept  us  from 
our  baptism,  in  spite  of  all  our  infidelities 
and  all  the  griefs  and  disappointments  we 
have  heaped  upon  him. 

And  then  onwards  and  upwards.  Onwards 
against  the  resistance,  both  within  and  with- 
out, which  hinders  our  advance  in  the  life 
of  God.  Onwards  without  fear,  or  doubt, 
or  wavering.  And  upwards,  aiming  as 
high  as  we  can,  for  we  have  to  ascend  the 
mountains  of  the  Lord's  House,  which  are 
exalted  very  high.  We  have  three  moun- 
tains to  scale  before  we  see  the  Vision  of 

*  Ib.  xii.  32. 


124  PENANCE   THE   SACRAMENT 

Peace.  The  first  is  Mount  Calvary,  by  the 
way  of  the  Cross,  in  penance,  mortification, 
and  self-denial,  sharp  indeed,  but  sweet 
when  we  remember  our  sins  and  the  love  of 
Jesus.  For  this  end  I  have  endeavoured 
to  speak  of  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  as  an 
object  of  love,  that  souls  may  be  drawn  to 
it  as  their  true  rest,  refreshment,  and  con- 
solation. The  second  is  Mount  Thabor,  the 
mountain  of  the  Beatitudes,  in  which  Jesus 
reveals  Himself  to  hearts  purified  on  Cal- 
vary, that  is,  in  the  Sacrament  of  the  Altar, 
in  which  Jesus  stands  surrounded  by  the 
meek,  the  merciful,  the  clean  of  heart,  the 
persecuted  for  justice  sake,  blessing  and 
changing  them  into  His  own  likeness.  And 
the  last  mountain  is  Mount  Sion,  upon 
which  is  the  Holy  City  and  the  vision  of 
God.  To  this  we  are  called.  Jesus  is  ever 
saying,  "  Come  up  hither,"*  ever  promising 
to  us  a  crown  of  perseverance.  A  few  short 
years,  and  a  little  sorrow,  and  a  few  conflicts, 
and  perhaps  some  falls  and  a  generous  re- 
pentance, with  a  loving  reparation,  then 

*  Apoc.  iv.  1. 


OF   PERSEVERANCE.  125 

comes  the  end,  eternal  rest  and  the  vision 
of  Beauty  and  of  Peace.  "  He  that  shall 
overcome  shall  thus  be  clothed  in  white 
garments,  and  I  will  not  blot  out  his  name 
out  of  the  Book  of  Life,  and  I  will  confess 
his  name  before  My  Father  and  before  His 
Angels."*  He  that  shall  overcome,  I  will 
make  him  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my  God : 
and  he  shall  go  out  no  more,  and  I  will 
write  upon  him  the  name  of  my  God,  and 
the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God,  the  new 
Jerusalem  which  cometh  down  out  of  Heaven 
from  my  God,  and  my  new  name."t  "  To 
him  that  shall  overcome,  I  will  give  to  sit 
with  Me  in  My  throne,  as  I  also  have  over- 
come, and  am  set  down  with  My  Father  in 
His  throne."J 

*  Apoc.  iii.  5.         t  Ib.  iii.  12.         f  Ib.  iii.  21. 


THE   END. 


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