Repentance, Contrition and the Usefulness of Sin

This Sunday’s gospel confronts us with an uncomfortable scene.  Two, in fact: a murder and an accident.  We are invited to be shaken up by tragic suffering, unmerited, meaningless suffering.  What does this say to us?  Do we think they deserved this?  Is suffering inseparably linked to sin as cause and effect?  No, says Jesus.  And yet, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” (Lk 13:5)

Lent is a time for repentance, which implies contrition, compunction of heart.  For some of us, this may carry with it the connotation of feeling bad about oneself.  Step one: identify your sins – don’t stop searching, they must be many and great.  Step two: try to feel as bad as you can about them – insufficient calory intake and sleep deprivation will help.  Thomas Merton caricatures this approach in the reading from we hear every year on Ash Wednesday: “We should not take upon ourselves a ‘burden’ of penance and stagger into Lent as if we were Atlas, carrying the whole word on his shoulders” (Merton, Seasons of Celebration).  But if Lent is instead a season of mercy, does this mean our sins don’t matter that much and we should spare ourselves the trouble of thinking about them?  What does true contrition look like?

Some years ago, I was struck by a point in John Henry Newman’s “The Idea of a University,” where he exposes a kind of false contrition.  He says that those whose approach to faith is too much in their heads may have an aesthetic distaste for behavior which offends their values.  The result is not sorrow for sin but a faux pas, a failure of good taste.  We might compare this to what St Bernard says about the difference between loving God for my own sake, for what I get out of it, and loving God for his own sake.  I may be offended by my sins for my own sake, because they make me look bad (even in my own eyes), and not because they offend God (or hurt other people).  This may be contrasted to our Sr Carol’s favorite quotation from St Therese:
“If you are willing to bear in peace the trial of not being pleased with yourself, you will be offering the Lord Jesus a home in your heart. It is true you will suffer, for you will feel like a stranger in your own house. But do not fear, for the poorer you are, the more Christ will love you.” (St Therese, The Story of a Soul)
The question is, how can we get to this place of unflinching honesty and peaceful acceptance?

In the moment, it can be terribly hard (or at least, I find it so) to look straight at one’s sins.  It is just too painful, too threatening, too dangerous.  I can’t be that bad!  The pain of contrition includes frustration at not being able to give up my sins, at not even being courageous enough to spear them with honest self-accusation but letting them wriggle free again and again.  But I do find that I am able to see them in retrospect, to look back, and only then admit with pain the wrongdoing of my past.  St Benedict, in the Prologue to his Rule, reminds us of God’s patience, which gives us the time we need to come to our senses (Cf. RB Prol. 36-7).  In Chapter 7, he makes a similar point: “After sparing us for a while because he is a loving father who waits for us to improve, he may tell us later, ‘This you did, and I said nothing’” (RB 7.30).  These last words, in Latin, “Haec fecisti et tacui,” have fascinated me for a long time.  Because of God’s kindness, his care for our weakness, he chooses not to crush us with knowledge we cannot handle.  He waits.  He bides his time.  Eventually, when we are strong enough, we see.  T.S. Eliot expresses this in unforgettable words:
“And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.”
(T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets: Little Gidding)

The second part of today’s gospel presents us with another image: the fig tree that has failed to bear fruit for three years.  Someone complains to the gardener, who pacifies him with a promise of elbow grease and manure.  Who is this person who demands, “Cut it down!  Why should it be wasting the soil?”  I have a feeling many of us jump to the conclusion that it is God the Father, whose gardener Son steps in to save the day.  This leaves us with a rather unfortunate ‘good cop-bad cop’ image of our Triune God.  Does the Holy Spirit cast the deciding vote?  The text itself implies that this person owns the vineyard, but he is only referred to by the pronoun “tis,” “a certain one.”  I think this character might be better called “the Accuser of our brethren” (Rv 12:10).  And when you think of it, this could be any one of us, strolling through the vineyard as if we owned the place, pointing out all the problems, getting someone else to fix them, preferably with an ax.  To this accusation, God the gardener responds humbly: “Sir, let it alone… it may bear fruit in the future” and keeps throwing on the manure.  St Bernard knew that manure is another word for mercy.  To paraphrase the Mellifluous Doctor: “self-knowledge stinks, but it is good for our growth.”

Julian of Norwich once asked God why he hadn’t stopped sin from happening in the first place.  Good question.  She received this answer, which has become famous:
“Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.”
(Julian of Norwich, quoted in Eliot’s Little Gidding)
We would be mistaken to think this means that our sins don’t matter.  They do matter, because they undo the goodness of God’s creation, beginning with ourselves.  Sin is Behovely.  Not lovely, but ‘behovely.’  Not A-OK, but necessary, useful in the economy of salvation.  Not irrelevant or non-existent, but something God can work with.

I am coming to believe that there is no such thing as victory over the passions.  Wait a second, heresy alert!  Someone call the police!  I think, though, that I have the tradition behind me on this.  John Cassian is very clear that the struggle for chastity, which for him epitomizes the ascetical struggle toward the good life, is a matter not of accomplishment, but of openness to grace:
“Yet one should be certain that although we undergo all the rigors of abstinence – namely hunger and thirst, along with vigils and constant work and an unceasing pursuit of reading – we are still unable to acquire the perpetual purity of chastity through these efforts, unless, while exerting ourselves constantly in them, we are taught in the school of experience that its incorruption is granted to us by the bounty of divine grace.”  (Cassian, Conferences 12.4.1)
Struggle against the passions is an education in reliance on God’s mercy.

To say there is no such thing as victory over the passions does not mean there is no such thing as fighting against the passions.  Yes, fight as if your life depended on it.  It does.  “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” (Lk 13:5).  Remember the episode from the life of St Antony, in which he lives in a tomb in complete solitude, suffering severe attacks from demons in animal form.  When he realizes that he is saved from his trial by the presence of Christ, he asks Jesus why he had not intervened earlier.  Jesus said: “Antony, I was here, but I wanted to see your struggle” (Athanasius, Life of Antony).  There is a fight, but there is no victory.  At least, I have not experienced one.  At one point I struggled with chastity.  At another I struggled with anger.  At more than one time I have struggled with the temptation to give up.  There is a fight, but there is no victory.  What there is, is defeat and humiliation, the forced abandonment of pretense, a cry for mercy, and very gradually, after a long time, at the most unexpected moment, deliverance.  By the time it comes, we have long since stopped hoping for it by our own efforts.  And we can in no way fool ourselves that we conquered.  It was simply taken away from us.  When I say deliverance, I do not necessarily mean something definitive, as if we were thereby rendered invulnerable.  We keep on fighting, falling, rising again, because we place all our failures in the keeping of One whose mercy never fails.  We become like one who comes up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved (Cf. Sg 8:5).  Our sins bind us to him, not in strength but in weakness.

May these words echo in our hearts:
“NEVER DESPAIR OF MY MERCY!” (Cf. RB 4.74)

Image: Black Eve, by J. Kirk Richards