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We ought to aim at the toughest penances, I believe. But we ought to remember two things. God has put the best ones right in front of our noses—if only we’ll accept the grace to see them and thank God in the midst of them.
What ought I to do for extra penance in Lent? It’s a question many ask themselves. Fortunately, the best kind of penances, all spiritual writers seem to agree, are the penances that are passive. They are the ones God has chosen for us. Dom Hubert Van Zeller, in his 1958 classic Approach to Penance, tells us that while taking on active penances, especially those dealing with the externals of our life, is something that might need some guidance, “passive penance is wholly a matter of submitting to what God sends, so requires almost no practical guidance.”
While the term “passive” makes it sound as if we are simply sitting there, this only means that God has taken the initiative in giving us our crosses. You have to be spiritually active to really gain from passive penance. Van Zeller said that we must be “willing, yielding positively, being very much alive.”
That can be a trick. But it’s also good news in particular for the old, the sick, the poor, and the weak, for whom an active penance, such as rigorous fasting or long prayer vigils on the knees or donating great sums of money or physical service to others is imprudent or even impossible. We are doing what God wants most when we submit to the difficult realities in our lives that range from being tired, sick, or sleepless to uncomfortable, bored, or depressed.
Van Zeller writes, “The more interior the faculty and intense its appetite, the greater the penance and the stronger the faith required to meet it.” He lists trials of the intellect such as feeling difficulty with faith or sure of how weak our own judgment is. He lists trials of our will such as not receiving affection back from those to whom we’ve given it—instead receiving “indifference or ingratitude or misunderstanding.” He lists trials of our memory such as the realization of opportunities that we’ve passed by and “resentful regret.” And then there are the trials to our imagination that include “temptations and dreads” that tend to obsess us.
Continued below.
theimaginativeconservative.org
What ought I to do for extra penance in Lent? It’s a question many ask themselves. Fortunately, the best kind of penances, all spiritual writers seem to agree, are the penances that are passive. They are the ones God has chosen for us. Dom Hubert Van Zeller, in his 1958 classic Approach to Penance, tells us that while taking on active penances, especially those dealing with the externals of our life, is something that might need some guidance, “passive penance is wholly a matter of submitting to what God sends, so requires almost no practical guidance.”
While the term “passive” makes it sound as if we are simply sitting there, this only means that God has taken the initiative in giving us our crosses. You have to be spiritually active to really gain from passive penance. Van Zeller said that we must be “willing, yielding positively, being very much alive.”
That can be a trick. But it’s also good news in particular for the old, the sick, the poor, and the weak, for whom an active penance, such as rigorous fasting or long prayer vigils on the knees or donating great sums of money or physical service to others is imprudent or even impossible. We are doing what God wants most when we submit to the difficult realities in our lives that range from being tired, sick, or sleepless to uncomfortable, bored, or depressed.
Van Zeller writes, “The more interior the faculty and intense its appetite, the greater the penance and the stronger the faith required to meet it.” He lists trials of the intellect such as feeling difficulty with faith or sure of how weak our own judgment is. He lists trials of our will such as not receiving affection back from those to whom we’ve given it—instead receiving “indifference or ingratitude or misunderstanding.” He lists trials of our memory such as the realization of opportunities that we’ve passed by and “resentful regret.” And then there are the trials to our imagination that include “temptations and dreads” that tend to obsess us.
Continued below.
Aiming for the Toughest Penances in Lent ~ The Imaginative Conservative
We ought to aim at the toughest penances, I believe. But we ought to remember two things. God has put the best ones right in front of our noses—if only we’ll accept the grace to see them and thank God in the midst of them... (essay by David Deavel)
theimaginativeconservative.org
