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You
say that forgiveness from God is there waiting for my acceptance. I believe
that is true, to some extent. If I say today, “Well, my past is no longer
an obstacle, I have been forgiven.” I would feel as if I was fooling
myself into thinking that I “got away” with the horrible things
I did in my past. Who’s to say, that as long as I accept God’s
forgiveness for my past, that I won’t do something just as horrible
tomorrow and ask for forgiveness and then say the same thing? I know I am
not explaining myself well at all. I am trying to say that I think my past
matters a great deal to God. If I don’t suffer the guilt and horror
and literal revulsion of what I did, I don’t think God would forgive.
Then the question is, “How much is enough?”
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 ctually, you’re asking the
same sort of question that Martin Luther asked, and we know what he ended
up doing. He couldn’t tolerate the uncertainty and hard work of ardent
devotion, so he formed his own church in which he guaranteed himself
salvation just by saying he accepted Christ
as his savior. Neat, simple, and painless.
Protestants today still believe it. But it’s
all wrong.
The Mockery Made
of Baptism
Yes, Christ paid for our sins
through His Passion and death, and each of us enters into that redemption
at baptism. Most often this is infant baptism,
however, and most parents—whether through outright
disobedience or through ignorance and
apathy—do almost nothing thereafter except indoctrinate their children
into popular culture and a life of continuing
sin. So it is almost inevitable, in most modern families,
that children will imitate their parents’
hypocrisy and commit a multitude of sins after
their baptism. What then?
God Forgives
Anything
Well, even then God forgives
anything and He forgives any number of times. When His disciples asked how
many times they had to forgive someone—one? two? seven?—Christ
told them to forgive “seventy times seven.” Peter denied Him three
times, and still Christ forgave Peter.
But notice that after the
Resurrection Christ asked Peter three times, “Do you love Me?”
(John 21:15-19). Peter was obliged to answer three times. And each time Christ
told him, “Feed My sheep.”
So what is this all about? It’s
about reparation.
Reparation
Forgiveness is one thing—it
means that God won’t push you away for doing bad things if you turn
back to Him in sorrow. But you still have to “pay” for the
evil that you, as God’s own anointed, have
brought into the world through your sin.
Now, please be careful not to
think that God is like some irrational, angry parent who has to be appeased
out of fear. The point about penance is that
once we recognize the great damage our sins have caused, we become
motivated by love itself
to help others achieve the same understanding about their sins. Christ sacrificed
Himself to save us from our sins, and in turn He asks all of us, just as
He asked Peter, to “feed My sheep”—that is, to love
others—in perfect imitation of Him as the path to spiritual
purity.
Repentance is
Love
 Moreover,
Saint Catherine of Genoa showed us that,
if we do repent, the price we pay for
purification in this life is nothing compared to the price we would have
to pay in Purgatory.
That is, if you repent in this
life, and if you spend the rest of your life in
sacrifice and prayer for the good of others,
that’s true love. That’s what it means
to feed Christ’s sheep.
On the other hand, if your repentance
is imperfect—that is, if it’s largely
intellectual rather than profoundly
experiential—then (assuming you avoid mortal sin and die in a state
of grace) you will learn perfection through the
fire of God’s love in
Purgatory.
When is Enough
Enough?
But what about that reparation
in this life? How do you know when is it enough? Well, there’s no way
to know.
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In this life,
we must always dwell in the vast gulf between the satisfaction of the good
we have done and the unknowing of what we have yet to do. |
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Luther didn’t like that
answer. But it’s really the only answer. And ultimately it doesn’t
matter, and here’s where Luther missed the point. What really matters
is the change of heart—the sorrow—that comes from seeing Christ’s
Sacred Heart constantly wounded by sin, especially
by the sins of those consecrated to Him in
baptism.
Sorrow and
Guilt
Notice here that sorrow
and guilt are two different things, psychologically.
Guilt
results from childhood psychological wounds of family dysfunction, and it
essentially means that you know you have done (or felt or thought) something
“bad” but don’t want to admit it or seek help because you
are terrified of the irrational family cruelty that will be inflicted on
you if anyone discovers your secret. And so you
do anything to hide from discovery, while your secret
festers in the dark depths of your heart. Moreover, in this forlorn state,
you are far removed from real love because all the
good you do for others is motivated unconsciously by the desire to appease
others to keep them from abandoning you if they should discover your real
thoughts and feelings.
Sorrow
means that you feel the pain of all the hurt you have inflicted on others
and of all your inadequacy that you have hidden
from God, and, willing to do anything to remedy the mess you’re in,
throw yourself into Christ’s unfathomable
mercy. Now, instead of doing good for others because
of your fear of what you might lose, you can do good for them for their own
sake, because of your humble joy for what they
will gain.
So when you say, “No more
sin. I’m sick of it,” something in your heart changes, even if
your behavior doesn’t change instantly because of it. You simply start
a process of change by which you endeavor to
surrender yourself completely to divine love,
by which desire for the holy becomes your only
desire.
Perseverence
in Love
There’s no way to know how
far you will get; that is, how much will be paid in this life and how much
will remain for Purgatory. All that matters, as
in the example of Mary Magdalene at the empty
tomb, is perseverance. Feel the pain and don’t
run. Trust in God’s love to do with you what needs to be done. Let
real love—love of God and love
for yourself and others—become your
only desire, make the
Blessed Sacrament your nourishment, and turn
to the communion of saints for companionship. (And it will be of great benefit
if you consecrate yourself to the Blessed
Virgin [1]
so as to help you trust in nothing but Christ’s
mercy.)
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Children who
grow up in dysfunctional families often have
a hard time with this. In compensation for all the abuse they suffered in
their families, they create the mistaken idea that love has no limits or
rules and essentially means total unconditional
acceptance of anything they do. But, as the Bible makes clear,
God’s love has very clear rules and commandments.
Why? Because God is mean and arbitrary, like a bitter, irrational parent?
No, God doesn’t do anything for vengeance; on the contrary, He does
everything to lead us to our ultimate good and purification. In the end,
God’s love has a purpose to it—to free us from our slavery to
sin—and our response must be unconditional love for, and acceptance
of, that purpose. |
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Luther, too, had a hard time
with this. He put his trust in common “love” and married a nun
and threw the Blessed Sacrament—along with the Blessed Virgin—out
of his church into the gutter. And then he proudly declared himself
“saved.”
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1. Complete instructions for the Consecration
to Jesus through Mary can be found in Saint Louis Marie de Montfort’s
book, True Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin.
  
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