‘I have merited hell’ -- first motive.
Adam, by his disobedience, drew down upon himself the sentence of eternal condemnation. God, it is true, gave him certain hope of escaping it when he foretold the advent of a Redeemer. On the condition that he should do penance -- “In the sweat of thy face shall you eat bread.” (Gen 3:19)
Adam must have been most grateful for this gracious commutation of his punishment, although long and severe! Nowadays, condemned criminals sometimes receive a similar reprieve. If we had committed a mortal sin, we must say, ‘I have merited hell, as did our first father Adam. If I am to escape, it is also on the condition of leading a life of penance.’
“All the life of a Christian should be a life of penance.” (The Council of Trent) How true! If we go down to hell in spirit and see the eternal punishments the lost endure, suffering in this life will seem light. We will then say, with St Augustine, “Here below, O Lord, burn, cut, and spare me not, so long as you spare me in eternity!”
‘Hell threatens me’ -- second motive.
Our Lord’s words are explicit -- ‘Except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.’ Why so? Because pride and concupiscence, since the Fall, having infected our mind and heart, rule our actions and will certainly lead us into every species of sin and disorder unless we practice constant penance and mortifications.
Humiliation is the penance of the intellect. Many, in rejecting it, have become apostates before God, if not before man. Mortification is the penance of the heart. How many, unwilling to endure it, who have begun in the spirit, later indulge the desires of the flesh? (St Paul)
The Church does well to exhort us tenderly to do penance from the first Sunday in Lent. Let us embrace it willingly during the Holy Week. We should strive, therefore, to do more than before.
‘Beings more perfect than myself are eternally lost’ -- third motive.
The angels have fallen in heaven; from heaven they were cast into hell. Faith assures us so. They had no time for penance; immediate punishment followed their offence.
Judas, called and formed by Jesus to the practice of spiritual perfection and apostolic duties, spent three years with him. Secretly fostering an evil inclination, he eventually became capable of conceiving and executing the most detestable of crimes which led him to despair, suicide, and hell.
“Wherefore, he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed, lest he fall ... But I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway.” (St Paul) Let us reason and act as did St Paul; we shall be saved with him.
Ref: cf “Practical Meditations” by a Father of the Society of Jesus, 1964, pp173-5
Generosity in our reparation
“Satisfaction is the final act which crowns the sacramental sign of Penance. In some countries, the act which the forgiven and absolved penitent agrees to perform after receiving absolution is precisely his penance.” (cf John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, “Reconciliatio et Poenitentia”, 2 December 1984, 31, III)
Even after our sins have been forgiven, we deserve a temporal punishment during this life; or after death, in Purgatory where souls of those who die in a state of grace go, but have not made full satisfaction for their sins. ((cf Council of Florence, “Decree for the Greeks”, DZ, 673)
Moreover, after its reconciliation with God, there remains the weakness of the will to abide in good; also a certain facility for making wrong judgments: a disorder in the sensual appetite ... the weakened scars of actual sin and disordered tendencies left in man by original sin, which come about because of our personal sins.
“It is not enough to remove the arrow from the body. We also have to heal the wound ... the same with the soul; after we have received forgiveness for our sins, we have to heal the wound that remains through penance.” (St John Chrysostom, “Homily, Gospel of St Matthew”, 3, 5)
Even after absolution, “there remains in the Christian a dark area, due to the wound of sin, to imperfection of love in repentance, to the weakening in the spiritual faculties. ... an area in which still operates an infectious source of sin which must always be fought with mortification and penance. This is the meaning of humble but sincere act of satisfaction.” (cf John Paul II, loc cit, cf also “General Audience”, 7 March 1984)
Ref: cf F Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 2:212-3
Repairing Sin’s Damage
Penance is closely connected with reconciliation with God, with oneself and with others. It implies overcoming that radical break which is sin. And this is achieved only through interior transformation or conversion which bears fruit in a person’s life through acts of penance ...
Sacred Scripture speaks to us of this reconciliation, inviting us to make every effort to attain it. But Scripture also tells us it is above all, God’s merciful gift to humanity. The wonderful history of salvation, a reconciliation by which God, as Father, in the blood and cross of his Son made man, reconciles the world to himself; thus brings into being a new family: those who have been reconciled.
Ref: Pope John Paul II, "Breakfast With the Pope", 1995, 34
On Commitments
In ‘a broad perspective of our commitments, Mary Most Holy’, the highly favoured daughter of the Father, will appear before the eyes of believers as the perfect model of love towards both God and neighbor. As she says in the Canticle of the ‘Magnificat’, great things were done for her by the Almighty, whose name is holy (cf Lk 1:49).
The Father chose her for a ‘unique mission’ in the history of salvation: to be the Mother of the long-awaited Saviour. The Virgin Mary responded to God’s call with total openness: “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” (Lk 1:38)
Her motherhood, which began in Nazareth and was lived most intensely in Jerusalem at the foot of the Cross, continues as a loving and urgent invitation addressed to all the children of God, so that they will return to the house of the Father when they hear her maternal voice: “Do whatever Christ tells you.” (cf Jn 2:5)
Ref: cf ibid, Apostolic Letter, “Tertio Millennio Adveniente”, pp64-5
Our Lady of the Forsaken, at Valencia, Spain. This image is in a chapel, where it is said that great noise is made when anyone is drowned or assassinated near the city. — Triple Couronne, n. 28. (“Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar; http://www.bethlehemobserver.com)
Our Lady of the Forsaken and Our Lady of Puig. Valencia, Spain. (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm)
Our Lady of the Forsaken (Valencia, Spain). (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html)
Our Lady of Puig, Valencia, Spain. (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html)
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