Pope John XXIII on Penance

In preparation for Lent, here’s some good stuff from Pope John XXIII’s encyclical PAENITENTIAM AGERE, ENCYCLICAL OF POPE JOHN XXIII ON THE NEED FOR THE PRACTICE OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR PENANCE, JULY 1, 1962.

The encyclical was written in order to exhort Catholics to prepare for the forthcoming Vatican 2 with acts of penance. I’ve a feeling that John XXIII would have been utterly mortified to know that one of the fruits of his Council would be the near-abandonment of the practice of sacramental penance in many parts of Western Europe and North America.

1. Doing penance for one's sins is a first step towards obtaining forgiveness and winning eternal salvation. That is the clear and explicit teaching of Christ, and no one can fail to see how justified and how right the Catholic Church has always been in constantly insisting on this.

She is the spokesman for her divine Redeemer. No individual Christian can grow in perfection, nor can Christianity gain in vigor, except it be on the basis of penance.

28. Our first need is for internal repentance; the detestation, that is, of sin, and the determination to make amends for it. This is the repentance shown by those who make a good Confession, take part in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and receive Holy Communion.

The faithful should be specially encouraged to do this during the novena to the Holy Spirit, for external acts of penance are quite obviously useless unless accompanied by a clear conscience and the detestation of sin.

Hence Christ's severe warning: "Unless you repent you will all perish in the same manner." God forbid that any of Our sons and daughters succumb to this danger.

29. But the faithful must also be encouraged to do outward acts of penance, both to keep their bodies under the strict control of reason and faith, and to make amends for their own and other people's sins.

St. Paul was caught up to the third heaven—he reached the summit of holiness—and yet he had no hesitation in saying of himself "I chastise my body and bring it into subjection." On another occasion he said: "They who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires."

St. Augustine issued the same insistent warning: "It is not enough for a man to change his ways for the better and to give up the practice of evil, unless by painful penance, sorrowing humility, the sacrifice of a contrite heart and the giving of alms he makes amends to God for all that he has done wrong."

30. External penance includes particularly the acceptance from God in a spirit of resignation and trust of all life's sorrows and hardships and of everything that involves inconvenience and annoyance in the conscientious performance of the obligations of our daily life and work and the practice of Christian virtue.

Penance of this kind is in fact inescapable. Yet it serves not only to win God's mercy and forgiveness for our sins…but also sweetens, one might almost say, the bitterness of this mortal life of ours with the promise of its heavenly reward. For "the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us."