What is the difference between mortification and penance

This blog is about the experience of being truly alive and how Christ satisfies our deepest longings. Post a Comment. Fully Alive in Christ! I gladly proclaimed in my previous post that God does not demand penance after you sin. He is not waiting for you to work off a debt. God is ready to embrace you again right now. The only thing you must bring is a heart that is sorrowful over sin and repentant.

But we have to be careful that we understand what that means, or we could easily throw out a great deal of Christian teaching and literature that emphasizes the mortification of sin or mourning over sin, thinking that stuff is all the same as penance. What I have described as 'penance' is not how everyone would use the term, but it is the most common perception today.

In contrast, the mortification of sin or the pursuit of holiness is not self-punishment, but a quest to purge the heart of sinful desires. Quite a few Christians have written powerfully over the years of the need to prick our own consciences and rend our hearts over the wrong desires within us and the sins we are prone to commit. He means the work of humbling ourselves; the act of putting off all of our pride and our desire to look good, and instead being very vulnerable and honest before God about our faults.

This is, in fact, how 'penance' has been understood by some saints in Christian tradition, but it is so often interpreted as I have described it so far that I think it is clearer to draw the distinction between penance as self-punishment and mortification of sin as purification. How is this different than punishing ourselves over sin? The difference is easy to miss, but is crucial for your faith and your joy. First, the difference is the order in which things happen: the common understanding of penance is that after you turn away to sin, you are expected to do something humbling and uncomfortable for a suitable time before you are fully accepted by God again and all is forgiven; but with repentance, God accepts you immediately when you come to him seeking forgiveness, and He restores you completely.

Then you can continue the work of humbling your heart and learning to hate the sin. But you are not expected to put yourself through a ritual of shame and self-punishment first before God will receive you back. He receives you back first. The second difference is in how God helps you during the process of restoration. With repentance and the free gift of forgiveness made possible by Jesus taking your place on the cross, God embraces you as soon as you turn to Him in regret and then He helps you do the work of searching and purifying your heart.

You get restored first, and do the work together. All He wants you to do when you get yourself into a mess is to cry out to Him and plead for His mercy, because He loves to be merciful to you and show His goodness. Let us distinguish between repentance, penance and The Sacrament of Penance.

Repentance involves a profound sorrow for our personal sins and incorporation into the life of Christ which begins with baptism where all our sins are forgiven and the life of grace is poured into our souls. But how are we to maintain this conversion since the strong residual effects of sin still remain in us even after baptism? It is here that acts of penance have a helpful role to play. Penitential actions play an important role in maintaining our conversion, and in protecting us from falling back into sin.

Exterior actions of self-discipline help us to achieve this goal. Indeed, acts of penance can be a profound sign of a deep, inward conversion they certainly were in the lives of the saints.

According to Catholic theology, penance is a virtue. Thomas Aquinas… says that penance is a special virtue which labors to efface sin and its consequences, inasmuch as sin is an offense against God.

Wherefore penance is a part of justice, and, inspired by charity, it commands other subordinate virtues, in particular temperance, as exemplified in fasting, abstinence, [and] vigils…. Repentance, then, is an act of conversion, whereas penance is a virtue closely associated with justice, temperance and mortification that helps — among other things — to maintain our conversion and sorrow for sin lest we be tempted back into a life of sin. This means is the virtue of penance.

What is that virtue? A habit which, when it is well-rooted and a lively one, disposes us continually towards expiation for sin, and towards destruction of the results of sin…. But what if we do fall back into serious sin? It was for this possibility that Jesus established the Sacrament of Penance so that mortal sins committed after baptism could be forgiven through the ministry of the priest, following a profession of our contrition for such sins and a firm purpose of amendment.

At such time the priest normally prescribes a specific penance often in the form of certain prayers for the penitent. Obviously, the Sacrament of Penance is a huge ally in our fight against sin.

Even vexing venial sins can be placed under the powerful light of purification this sacrament provides. Besides protecting us from sin, the virtue of penance can also be exercised as an act of charity towards our neighbor. Since our works of satisfaction can contribute to the welfare of others, will not our charity help us to do penance, not only for ourselves but likewise on behalf of our brethren? Is not this the best means of obtaining their conversion or, if they have turned to God, their perseverance?

Is not this the best service we could possibly render them, a benefit worth infinitely more than all the temporal goods we could confer upon them?

The same can be said of the saints, the champion athletes of the Faith. They are exemplars not of physical training but of the ascetic life. Nothing has filled the void of mortifications. Nothing has filled the void of mortifications because there is nothing that can. Mortifications and penances are the spiritual training that make us winners of the race, and winners of the good fight 2 Tim.

So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we are imperishable. Paul is not sugarcoating his words here. To pommel literally means to strike and beat. There are amazing stories about the ways in which saints tamed their flesh.

Saint Benedict is said to have jumped into a thorn bush to quit thinking lustfully. Philip Neri wore hot, itchy shirts made of horse hair. Saint Gemma wore a thin belt of knots tightly under her clothes.