As the Catholic Church celebrates the season of Lent, it is good for the faithful to understand what the true meaning of this liturgical season is.
Many Catholics may rightfully associate the season of Lent with repentance and doing penance for our sins. This is all too appropriate for the season leading up to Easter, which celebrates Christ’s final victory over the forces of sin and death. But what precisely does repenting of our sins include?
In the responsorial psalm for Ash Wednesday – taken from the fifty-first Psalm – it is written, “Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:3). Yet, later on in the same Psalm, one reads, “Behold, you desire true sincerity; and secretly you teach me wisdom” (Psalm 51:8). What can be inferred from these two verses is that God, in His infinite mercy, is willing to forgive us of our sins, yet, as creatures with free will, we must willingly chose to accept and cooperate with God’s mercy, and God, through His revelation, tells us all that we must know in order to do so. Thus, two things are necessary to overcome sin: God’s free initiative in extending His grace and mercy to us and our sincere desire to be forgiven and repent of our sins.
With this in mind, there are two spiritual and moral tendencies that must be avoided in order for true repentance to take place. The first is the sin of presumption, and the other the sin of despair. Presumption is when a person believes that God automatically forgives his or sins, simply because the person desires forgiveness, and that one does not need to actually say or do anything to repent of his sins. It is, in a word, a willingness to receive God’s mercy and forgiveness without the accompanying desire to repent.
God’s mercy cannot bring about true spiritual renewal unless we are willing to cooperate with God. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes how presumption – which it defines as a state in which the soul “hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon from his sins without repenting of them” – is born of a sense of pride.
The latter sin – despair – is a spiritual state in which one believes that his or her sins are so large that God is either incapable of forgiving or unwilling to forgive them, or that these sins exceed his or her own ability to overcome. Ironically, despair itself is an obstacle against the repentance of sin, since if one believes that his sin is too great to be forgiven, he will not seek forgiveness.
In a word, a despair is an obstacle to seeking God’s forgiveness – which one in a state of despair thinks is impossible – just as presumption is an obstacle to conversion or repentance – which one in a state or presumption believes is unnecessary or superfluous. Again referencing the Catholic Encyclopedia, presumption can be seen as a sin against the virtue of hope by way of excess, whereas despair can be seen as a sin against the virtue of hope by way of defect.
When one looks to Church history, one can see concise and profound words against both despair and presumption in the works of St. Cyprian, the early Christian saint and bishop of the town of Carthage in North Africa. In the year A.D. 250, the Roman emperor Decius began a persecution of Christians. The Christian communities of North Africa were hit the worst. Within St. Cyprian’s diocese, as well as in many of the surrounding dioceses, a large number of Christians fell from the faith under the pressure of persecution. Many wondered whether such people should be readmitted into the Church and, if so, what sort of penance corresponded with their sin.
During the period of the persecution, it was common for those Christians who had apostatized to go to people known as “confessors” – namely, people who had been arrested for refusing to reject the Christian faith but who had not been martyred – and confess their sins to them, and in return the confessors would pray on their behalf. It was believed that one could obtain forgiveness for the sin of apostasy through the intercession of the confessors. Unfortunately, many confessors began to abuse their status within the community and began to proclaim forgiveness for sins for large sums of people at once, often without any, or at least with no substantial, penance to go along with the absolution. Thus, many who still had the sin of apostasy on their soul went on to resume their previous life in the Church, including the reception of communion.
St. Cyprian, in his work On the Lapsed, in which he deals with the systemic issue of apostasy among certain segments of the faithful in the North African Church, warns against these penitents’ behavior as a form of sacrilege, claiming that the penitents sinned more by receiving communion in a state of sin than when they had initially fallen into a state of apostasy. Moreover, commenting on the words of the confessors to the lapsed, which provided a false state of spiritual comfort, he wrote:
They think that to be peace which some truck with deceiving words. That is not peace but war, nor is he joined with the Church who is separated from the Gospel. Why do they call an injury a kindness? Why do they refer to impiety by the term “piety”? Why do they interrupt the lamentation of penance and communicate with those who ought to weep continually and entreat their Lord?
What Cyprian is saying is that those who commit the sin of presumption believe themselves righteous when they are not. They cannot achieve the fullness of holiness, the fullness of piety, or the spiritual peace that comes from being actively involved in a relationship with God. Thus, we end up in a paradox: through presumption, we think we will obtain forgiveness of sins solely due to our wanting it, and we thus believe we are given the strength to act piously, but since we remain in a state of sin, our attempts at piety are in fact impious. Those in such a state think they have received the peace of the Lord, but in fact, they have not. We think we have obtained the benefits of penance without actually making any penance. This leads Cyprian to speak harshly towards the corrupt confessors: why do they see their cheap grace, their quick, easy, and “ready-made” means of forgiveness, which is injurious to the souls of the faithful, as though it were an act of kindness and mercy granted upon those steeped in sin?
Cyprian demands true conversion among the lapsed and penances that correspond to the sin. It is for this reason that Cyprian goes on to say, “Let no man betray himself; let no man deceive himself. The Lord alone can have mercy. He alone can grant pardon for sins which were committed against Him.” Humans cannot, as Cyprian wrote, “remit or forego what has been committed against the Lord” by doing that which is just as bad as or even worse than the initial sin itself – that is to say, acting as if we had no sin and carrying on cannot counteract the effects of sin. Thus, he concluded, “The Lord must be implored; the Lord must be placated by our own satisfaction[.]” To think one can obtain forgiveness of sins without first making recourse to God’s mercy “is to have provoked His wrath.”
Thus, Cyprian admonishes his audience, “Let us turn to the Lord with our whole mind, and, expressing repentance for our sin with true grief, let us implore God’s mercy. Let the soul prostrate itself before Him; let sorrow give satisfaction to Him; let our every hope rest upon Him.” We must truly feel sorrow for our sins, and yet Cyprian also says that those who are truly repentant of their sins should trust that God can and will forgive them.
He writes:
But do you, brethren, who are inclined towards fear of the Lord…repenting and grieving over your sins, recognize the very serious crime of your conscience, open the eyes of your hearts to an understanding of your shortcomings, neither despairing of the mercy of the Lord nor yet already laying claim to pardon. As God by reason of His affection as Father is always indulgent and good, so by reason of His majesty as judge He is to be feared. … If anyone performs prayer with his whole heart, if He groans with genuine lamentations and tears of repentance, if by continuous just works he turns to the Lord to the forgiveness of sins, such can receive His mercy, who has offered His mercy with these words: “When you turn and lament, then you shall be saved and shall know where you have been” [Isaiah 30:15]; and again: “I desire not the death of the dying,” [Ezekiel 30:11], says the Lord in the Lord’s own words: “Turn,” He says, “to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy…” [Joel 2:13]. He can grant mercy; He can turn aside His judgment.
God is always willing to forgive us our sins. Yet there needs to be a sense of receptiveness to God’s mercy, there needs to be cooperation with God’s mercy, in order for God’s mercy to bear any fruit. We should not, as Cyprian said, be “seduced by false promises” from those who claim to offer quick and easy forms of repentance, for true repentance requires true conversion, a radical sense of breaking off from one’s sin and turning toward God.
Scripture frequently uses the image of “dying to one’s sinful self” to express the idea of separation from sin. St. Peter, for example, writes, “He bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). St. Paul says that in our baptism, we “were buried with Him … into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). We must completely reject our sins and wholeheartedly turn to God, and only in this can our sins be forgiven.
Cyprian writes that those who believe otherwise “believe men against God.” Yet we should never doubt God’s ability to forgive our sins. The first epistle of St. John summarizes this balance concisely: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
As with many teachings of the Early Church Fathers, they are timeless and VERY relevant,
St. Cyprian wrote, over 1800 years ago, the following:
“Moreover, beloved brethren, a new kind of devastation has appeared; and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving mischief and a fair-seeming calamity. Contrary to the vigour of the Gospel, contrary to the law of the Lord and God, by the temerity of some, communion is relaxed to heedless persons,-a vain and false peace, dangerous to those who grant it, and likely to avail nothing to those who receive it. They do not seek for the patience necessary to health nor the true medicine derived from atonement. Penitence is driven forth from their breasts, and the memory of their very grave and extreme sin is taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow that is planted in the deep and secret entrails is concealed by a dissimulated suffering. Returning from the altars of the devil, they draw near to the holy place of the Lord, with hands filthy and reeking with smell, still almost breathing of the plague-bearing idol-meats; and even with jaws still exhaling their crime, and reeking with the fatal contact, they intrude on the body of the Lord, although the sacred Scripture stands in their way, and cries, saying, “Every one that is clean shall eat of the flesh; and whatever soul eateth of the flesh of the saving sacrifice, which is the Lord’s, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from his people.”22 Also, the apostle testifies, and says, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils.”23 He threatens, moreover, the stubborn and froward, and denounces them, saying, “Whosoever eateth the bread or drinketh the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”24
16. All these warnings being scorned and contemned,-before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest,25 before the offence of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to His body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord. They think that that is peace which some with deceiving words are blazoning forth:26 that is not peace, but war; and he is not joined to the Church who is separated from the Gospel. Why do they call an injury a kindness? Why do they call impiety by the name of piety? Why do they hinder those who ought to weep continually and to entreat their Lord, from the sorrowing of repentance, and pretend to receive them to communion?”
Powerful. Thanks for the excerpt.
I wonder what Saint Cyprian would make of Pope Francis and his ideas about Mercy. Also Pope Francis’ solution to dealing with both of these sins, and sin in general. I have a feeling the “believing men against God” quote might come up. We need a Saint Cyprian to step forward and expose the errors of this day. I nominate Benedict, it has been his life’s work to study these issues, now is the time for that scholarship to come to fruition. Now it’s not a matter of academic scholarship, now it is a matter of defending the Bride of Christ, with words crafted over a lifetime.
I fear it is late in the game for any holy theologian to defend the Church’s teachings on this matter so that the desired Church teaching of our Lord and early Church Fathers will resound once again.
I am afraid most cardinals and bishops would recant, and the few who actually do believe, will remain silent as is their custom.
Our Lord will need to go back to square one and show His mighty power, so that many will come to fear their Lord in great awe. His mercy is from age to age for those who fear Him, as our Queen has stated.
There is no fear of the Lord! The institutional Church has abandoned this notion, namely the First Commandment, but not Christ’s Church.
Hi cs – Excellent analysis, sometimes it is easy to forget how far off track the Church is at this time. It almost seems that God is allowing us to establish our will in such a way that it can be judged with certainty as to our faith in Him or lack of Faith. I am still hopeful that God will allow us to see our souls as He sees them, how we respond to that, will show what we really love. How long will the lines to confession be on that day?
But does he still have the strength, even if he wanted to?
Hi Susy – The Holy Spirit will provide what is needed physically.
St. Cyprian spoke exactly to this issue of Communion without confession of sin. He stated, “Contrary to the vigour of the Gospel, contrary to the law of the Lord and God, by the temerity of some, communion is relaxed to heedless persons,-a vain and false peace, dangerous to those who grant it, and likely to avail nothing to those who receive it.” He also said that this was being done under the title of mercy…..he spoke directly against this
Hi Eric – That is the very definition of a smoking gun. Thank you for your scholarship, I hope the Bishops, are as diligent in making the case against Francis.
Thanks Fniper, Ive studied this issue a lot and where the early Church Fathers stood concerning this. I could post more quotes if you wish. I would like you to take the time and read the full exert of what St. Cyprian said as it will shock you, because it is as if he is speaking directly to us. Please pray for me so that I may have the spiritual strength to do everything I can to fight this battle. Thanks.
Keep posting and sharing this quote and keep evangelizing! Thanks
St. Cyprian wrote, over 1800 years ago, the following:
“Moreover, beloved brethren, a new kind of devastation has appeared; and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving mischief and a fair-seeming calamity. Contrary to the vigour of the Gospel, contrary to the law of the Lord and God, by the temerity of some, communion is relaxed to heedless persons,-a vain and false peace, dangerous to those who grant it, and likely to avail nothing to those who receive it. They do not seek for the patience necessary to health nor the true medicine derived from atonement. Penitence is driven forth from their breasts, and the memory of their very grave and extreme sin is taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow that is planted in the deep and secret entrails is concealed by a dissimulated suffering. Returning from the altars of the devil, they draw near to the holy place of the Lord, with hands filthy and reeking with smell, still almost breathing of the plague-bearing idol-meats; and even with jaws still exhaling their crime, and reeking with the fatal contact, they intrude on the body of the Lord, although the sacred Scripture stands in their way, and cries, saying, “Every one that is clean shall eat of the flesh; and whatever soul eateth of the flesh of the saving sacrifice, which is the Lord’s, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from his people.”22 Also, the apostle testifies, and says, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils.”23 He threatens, moreover, the stubborn and froward, and denounces them, saying, “Whosoever eateth the bread or drinketh the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”24
16. All these warnings being scorned and contemned,-before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest,25 before the offence of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to His body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord. They think that that is peace which some with deceiving words are blazoning forth:26 that is not peace, but war; and he is not joined to the Church who is separated from the Gospel. Why do they call an injury a kindness? Why do they call impiety by the name of piety? Why do they hinder those who ought to weep continually and to entreat their Lord, from the sorrowing of repentance, and pretend to receive them to communion?”
Hi Eric – Thank you for posting the words of Saint Cyprian, they are indeed quite compelling and timely. I will pray for you and your success in battling the evil one.
Source:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050703.htm
Start at Section# 15
Thanks Fniper, Ive studied this issue a lot and where the early Church Fathers stood concerning this. I could post more quotes if you wish. I would like you to take the time and read the full exert of what St. Cyprian said as it will shock you, because it is as if he is speaking directly to us. Please pray for me so that I may have the spiritual strength to do everything I can to fight this battle. Thanks.
Keep posting and sharing this quote and keep evangelizing!
St. Cyprian wrote, over 1800 years ago, the following:
“Moreover, beloved brethren, a new kind of devastation has appeared; and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving mischief and a fair-seeming calamity. Contrary to the vigour of the Gospel, contrary to the law of the Lord and God, by the temerity of some, communion is relaxed to heedless persons,-a vain and false peace, dangerous to those who grant it, and likely to avail nothing to those who receive it. They do not seek for the patience necessary to health nor the true medicine derived from atonement. Penitence is driven forth from their breasts, and the memory of their very grave and extreme sin is taken away. The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow that is planted in the deep and secret entrails is concealed by a dissimulated suffering. Returning from the altars of the devil, they draw near to the holy place of the Lord, with hands filthy and reeking with smell, still almost breathing of the plague-bearing idol-meats; and even with jaws still exhaling their crime, and reeking with the fatal contact, they intrude on the body of the Lord, although the sacred Scripture stands in their way, and cries, saying, “Every one that is clean shall eat of the flesh; and whatever soul eateth of the flesh of the saving sacrifice, which is the Lord’s, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from his people.”22 Also, the apostle testifies, and says, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils.”23 He threatens, moreover, the stubborn and froward, and denounces them, saying, “Whosoever eateth the bread or drinketh the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”24
16. All these warnings being scorned and contemned,-before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest,25 before the offence of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, violence is done to His body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord. They think that that is peace which some with deceiving words are blazoning forth:26 that is not peace, but war; and he is not joined to the Church who is separated from the Gospel. Why do they call an injury a kindness? Why do they call impiety by the name of piety? Why do they hinder those who ought to weep continually and to entreat their Lord, from the sorrowing of repentance, and pretend to receive them to communion?”
The narrow path between presumption and despair is the actual avenue for hope. Faith has its basis in existing in/with/through God, Hope is an activity of the mind/heart/will – not presuming of God’s Love, nor despairing of it and always acting in the “cloud of unknowing.” Or at least that is what I’ve read. Pretty awesome.
It occurred to me that nearly everyone who attends a Novus Ordo Mass is committing the sin of presumption. The reason is nearly all go to Communion but hardly any go to confession. Of course, this situation is never mentioned from the pulpit. Bad for business I guess.
It depends upon which parish and which priests and which laity. Some priests/ parishes offer confession by appointment only. Others offer confession daily and before every mass on the weekend. There is a range in between practices with forty five minutes on Saturday afternoon being the norm. And yes, there are lines at the parishes with frequent confession times. Devout Catholics from other parishes go to those churches for confession. People wait patiently for their turn and the priest remains until all confessions are heard. It just depends. Certainly once or twice a year is not adequate. Every two weeks to every month (and after a grave sin) is a much better practice, in my opinion. But each person must decide for him or herself. You are correct that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is rarely mentioned from the pulpit.
Agree. Our cathedral parish offers confession on Saturday for 45minues. At Easter time they offer an evening penance service where multiple priests are available. Basically the message is that confession is only important in a legalistic way —making one’s Easter duty or yearly confession. Fortunately, in our diocese an FSSP parish is available which offer confessions before Mass every day.
Thank you for this message, which is refreshing amid the storms of heresy we usually encounter here, which I admit are necessary. Excellent teaching from one of the greatest of our Fathers,