Practices of
Penance
& Mortification
in the
Society
of the Immaculata
The more perfectly to practice
penance and mortification, we must united ourselves to the atoning
Christ, and ask Him to dwell within us with His dispositions of victim;
then, we must enter into His sentiments and join in His acts of penance
and mortification.
SENTIMENTS OF PENANCE
These sentiments are most aptly expressed in the Psalms and
particularly in the Miserere.
- First comes abiding
and sorrowful remembrance of our sins: "My sin is always before
me" (Ps. 50). No doubt, it is not expedient to recall them to mind in
detail; this might stir the imagination and be a source of new
temptations. Yet, we must always bear in mind that we have sinned and
above all we must entertain a sense of sorrow and humiliation. We have
offended God in His sight, before that God Who is holiness itself, and
Who hates iniquity, before that God Who is all love and Whom we
have outraged by dishonouring His gifts. Nothing is left to us but to
appeal frequently to His mercy and implore His forgiveness. Indeed, we
cherish the hope of having been pardoned; still, longing for a more
complete forgiveness, we humbly beg God to cleanse us even more in the
Blood of His Son. To effect a more intimate union with Him, we want our
sins wiped out and their traces removed. We want our spirit and our
heart renewed, and we want the joy of a good conscience restored to us.
- This sorrowful remembrance is accompanied by an abiding sense of shame. We
stand in confusion before God like Christ Who bore before His Father
the infamy of our sins, especially at Gethsemane and on Calvary. We
carry our shame before men, seeing ourselves as criminals in the
assembly of the Saints. We bear the opprobrium in our own hearts, and
unable to stand the reproach, to suffer the disgrace, we utter the
sincere cry of the Prodigal: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and
before thee." We repeat with the publican; "O God, be merciful to me a
sinner."
- Of this a wholesome fear
of sin is born, a horror for all the occasions that might lead
us into it; for despite our good will we ever remain exposed to
temptation and liable to fall. Hence, a great distrust of self follows,
while from our hearts we are prompted to repeat the prayer of St.
Philip Neri: "My God, beware of Philip, otherwise he will betray Thee."
This distrust makes us foresee the dangerous occasions that might bring
a fall and the positive means that will ensure our perseverance. It
keeps us on our guard against the least imprudence. The more we are
conscious of our weakness, the more we place our confidence in God,
convinced that through the power of His grace we shall conquer.
WORKS OF PENANCE
No matter how demanding these works may be, they will seem of light
account if we keep constantly in mind this thought: I am a fugitive
from hell, a fugitive from purgatory, and were it not for the mercy of
God, I would be there now, undergoing the well merited punishment of my
faults. Therefore, I can consider nothing as humiliating me overmuch or
grieving me above measure.
The chief works of penance we must perform are:
- The submissive,
willing, and joyful acceptance of all the crosses Providence may
see fit to send us. The Council of Trent teaches us [Session XIV,
chapter 9] that it is a great token of God's love for us that He deigns
to accept as satisfaction for our sins the patient endurance wherewith
we suffer the temporal ills He visits upon us. Therefore, should we
have any physical or moral trials to undergo, arising from the
uncontrolled forces of nature or from reverses of fortune, from failure
or humiliation, let us, instead of breaking into bitter complaint as
our tendencies would suggest, accept all such suffering in a spirit of
gentle resignation, persuaded that they are the just wages of sin, and
that patience in adversity is one of the best means of atoning for it.
This acceptance of it, a mere resignation at first, will gradually grow
into a manful, joyous endurance of ordeals, as we see our woes thereby
assuaged and made fruitful. We should be glad to shorten our purgatory,
to become more like our Crucified Master and to glorify the God we have
outraged. Then patience will bear all its fruits and cleanse our soul
because it will be a work of love.
- To patience we shall add the faithful discharge of our duties
in a spirit of penance and reparation. The most acceptable sacrifice we
can offer God is obedience. Now, the duties of our Religious vocations
are the manifest expression of God's Will in our regard. To fulfill
them as perfectly as we can is to offer God the most perfect sacrifice
within our giving, a perpetual holocaust, since this duty rests upon us
from morning until night. Faithful obedience to the Constitutions, and
the courageous accomplishment of the orders or directions of our
Superiors multiply our acts of obedience, of sacrifice and of love, and
enable us to repeat with St. John Berchmans: "My greatest penance is
community life".
- To this we add the tremendous beneficial practice of Fasting. Fasting was, in
Old Testament times, one of the greatest means of making atonement. It
was called "to afflict the soul;" but to be acceptable it had to be
accompanied by sentiments of sorrow for sin and mercy toward others.
Under the New Law, fasting is an earnest of grief and of penance. Our
Lord, wishing to expiate our sins, fasted forty days and forty nights,
and taught His Apostles that certain evil spirits cannot be cast out
except by prayer and fasting. True to His teachings, the Society
faithfully observes the Lenten Fast, that of the Vigils and of the
Ember Days to offer her members the opportunity of making expiation for
their faults. Many a sin takes its rise directly or indirectly in the
craving for pleasure, in excess in eating and drinking, and nothing is
so effective in making atonement as mortification in eating, reaching
as it does the very root of the evil by mortifying the craving for
sensual pleasure. This is why, with the permission of one's spiritual
director, Religious may fast outside the seasons appointed by the
Church. Those who cannot keep strict fasts are urged to forego some
food at each meal in order thus to curb their sensuality.
- The Society of the Immaculata maintains the penitential practice
of the Chapter of Faults and the Disciplina. While not directly
proscribing any forms of corporal penance's for her Religious, time is
set aside each Friday for the community's use of the cord-bound
Disciplina, over the habit, while chanting of the Miserere. All other
forms of corporal penance must receive the blessing of one's spiritual
director.
SENTIMENTS OF MORTIFICATION
Like penance, mortification has a part in the cleansing from past
faults, but its chief purpose is to safeguard us against sin in the present and in the future, by weakening in us the love
of pleasure, the source of our sins.
Mortification is an act of abnegation or self renunciation: "If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself." But mortification also has a
positive aspect: it is an act that maims and cripples the inordinate
inclinations of nature. It is a crucifixion of the flesh and its lusts,
whereby we attach, as it were, our faculties to the law of the Gospel
by devoting them to prayer and labour. This crucifixion, if it
persists, produces a sort of death and burial whereby we seem to die
completely to self and to be buried with Christ, to love with Him a new
life.
To indicate this death, St. Paul makes us of another expression,. Since
in Baptism a new life is given us, supernatural life, the while our own
natural life subsists with the threefold concupiscence, the Apostle,
calling the latter the "old man" and the former "the new man," declares
that we must "put off the old man and put on the new. And since this is
not done without a struggle, he says that life is a fight: "I have
fought the good fight", and that Christians are the athletes who
chastise their body and bring it into subjection.
From all these and similar phrases it follows that mortification
comprises a twofold element: one negative
- detachment, renunciation, despoilment; the other positive - the struggle against the
evil tendencies of nature, the effort to curb a deaden them, a
crucifixion, a death of the old man and his lusts, in order to live
Christ's own life.
NECESSITY OF MORTIFICATION FOR SALVATION
There is a kind of mortification which is necessary for salvation in
this sense, that if we fail to practice it, we run the risk of falling
into mortal sin. Our Lord speaks of it in a very clear way concerning
faults against chastity: "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after
her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." There are
looks, then, that are gravely sinful, such as are prompted by evil
desire. In this case mortification of the eyes is imperative under pain
of mortal sin. Our Lord says so in no uncertain language: "And if thy
right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee." It is
not question here to putting out one's eye, but of turning them away
from such sights as are a cause of sin. St. Paul gives us the reason
for these serious injunctions: "For if you live according to the flesh,
you shall die; but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh,
you shall live."
We know that the three-fold concupiscence remains with us, spurred on
by the world and the devil, and often inclines us to evil and endangers
our salvation, unless we take heed to mortify it. Hence, the absolute
necessity of waging a constant warfare against our evil tendencies; of
fleeing from the proximate occasions of sin, that is, from such things
or such persons as, given our past experience, are to us a serious and
probable danger of sin; of renouncing thereby a great many pleasures
toward which our nature draws us. There are, then, certain practices of
mortification which are imperative; without them we should fall into
mortal sin.
NECESSITY OF MORTIFICATION FOR PERFECTION
This necessity follows from what we know of the nature of perfection,
which consists in the love of God unto sacrifice and the immolation of
self. This is so true, that, according to the Imitation of Christ [Book
I, chapter 25], the measure of our spiritual growth depends upon the
measure of violence we do to ourselves. It will suffice, then, to
recall briefly a fe of the motives that may aid the will in the
discharge of this duty; they are drawn from the point of view of our
relation to God, to Jesus Christ, and from that of our own personal
sanctification.
- We cannot attain to union with God
without mortification, without detaching ourselves from the inordinate
love of creatures. By Baptism, a real contract is concluded
between God and ourselves. God on His part cleanses us from the stain
of original sin, adopts us as His children, and admits us to share in
His life, engaging Himself to bestow upon us all the graces necessary
to the preservation and development of that life. On our part, we bind
ourselves to live like true children of God, to strive to become
perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. This, however, we can do
only if we practice mortification, for on the one side, the Holy Ghost,
given us in Baptism, urges us to embrace contempt, poverty, suffering;
and, on the other, our flesh longs for honour, pleasure, riches. Within
us, therefore, rages a conflict, an incessant stubble. We cannot be
faithful to God unless we renounce the inordinate love of honour,
pleasure, and riches. At our Baptism, the priest marked us with two
Crosses, one upon the heart to stamp thereon the love of the Cross, the
other upon our shoulders to give us the strength to carry it. We should
be untrue to our baptismal vows, if we did not carry our cross by
waging war against the lust for honour through humility, against the
lust for pleasure through mortification, against the lust for riches
through poverty.
- Through Baptism we have been incorporated into Christ, we have become His members,
and as such, it is from Him we are to receive life, and motion, and
inspiration, and thereby be made conformable to Him. But we know that
Christ's whole life was a cross and a martyrdom. Ours, then, cannot be
a life of pleasure and honours, but it must be a life of mortification.
This is what our Divine Head clearly tells us: "If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." If
there is any one who must follow Jesus, it is the Religious, who seeks
after perfection. But how can one follow Christ, if one is unwilling to
carry his cross daily - the cross that God Himself has chosen for him
and sent to him? How can such a one follow Him Who from His very entry
into the world embraced the Cross, Who throughout His entire life
sighed for sufferings and humiliations, Who was wedded to poverty at
the Crib and Whom poverty followed unto Calvary? It would be
shameful to appear as delicate members, shrinking at the least smart of
pain, under a Head that is crowned with thorns. Therefore, if we wish
to become like unto Jesus Christ and reflect His perfections, we must
like Him carry our cross. Religious life binds us to this even more,
since we are motivated by a desire to win the salvation of our brethren.
NECESSITY OF MORTIFICATION FOR OUR
SANCTIFICATION
We must secure our perseverance
in good, and mortification offers without doubt one of the best means
we have to keep free from sin. What causes us to surrender to
temptation is the love of pleasure or the
horror of hardship, the hardship of the struggle. Mortification
combats this twofold tendency, which is relay but one, for by having us
break with some few legitimate pleasures, it arms our will against
those that are unlawful, thus giving us an easier victory over
sensuality and the love of self. If, on the contrary, we yield to
pleasure, allowing ourselves all lawful joys, how shall we be able to
resist when our sensuality, hankering after new delights, dangerous or
wrong, feels itself as if overpowered by the force of habit? The bias
is so strong, that where our sensuous nature is concerned, it is easy
to fall into the abyss, by a sort of vertigo. Even when it is a
question of pride, the downward plunge is far more rapid than we think.
we life about a trifle to cover up a fault, to escape humiliation, and
then when we approach the tribunal of penance we run the risk of
failing in sincerity through the dread of mortifying avowal. Our safety
demands, therefore, a warfare against self love as well as against
sensuality and greed.
We must realize, then, that there is no perfection, no possible
attainment of virtue without the practice of mortification. How can we
be chaste without deadening that sensuality that urges us so strongly
toward evil and dangerous pleasures? How can we be temperate unless we
curb our greediness? How practice poverty, nay justice, if we do not
combat our greed? How be humble, meek, kind, if we exercise no control
over the passions of pride, anger, envy, jealousy, that lurk in the
recesses of every human heart? We must conclude that just as a lack of
mortification is the cause of all our vices, mortification is the
foundation and the source of all our virtues.
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