Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Penitence curtails the flesh so the spirit can live

Likely most people believe that Pope John Paul II is a saint, even a great saint. But the news that he engaged in somewhat extreme forms of penitence could cause some to wonder. The postulator for the pope's cause recently published an Italian-language book that contained news that Pope John Paul sometimes spent entire nights lying on a bare floor with his arms outstretched and that he flagellated himself.

The postulator, Msgr. Slawomir Oder, called these penances a sign of the late pope's sainthood. Today, many would see them as masochistic, as proof that Pope John Paul's faith, even Catholic faith itself, is a sick, self-loathing thing. Better that one should love than he or she should impose suffering on oneself, they would say.

Even for North American Catholics today, it is difficult to grasp the meaning of penitence. Prior to the Second Vatican Council - for those who can remember that far back - our approach to penance was legalistic and demanding. There was a lengthy fast before one could receive Communion, numerous fast days in Advent and Lent, and meatless Fridays.

The Church's decision to pull back from such imposed austerity came at a time when the Western world was experiencing unprecedented prosperity and technological advance. Comfort and pleasure-seeking became absolute values.

Fifty years later, our attitudes are only more extreme - Why would anyone forsake that Caribbean cruise to give the money to the poor and sleep on a bare floor?

The news of Pope John Paul's penitential practices, especially coming as it did on the cusp of Lent, should re-awaken our awareness of the importance of self-denial. In his 1984 document on Reconciliation and Penance, the pope spoke of penance in terms of conversion - "the concrete daily effort of a person, supported by God's grace, to lose his or her own life for Christ as the only means of gaining it" (n. 4).

Penance, he continued, is "an effort to overcome in oneself what is of the flesh in order that what is spiritual may prevail; a continual effort to rise from the things of here below to the things of above, where Christ is."

Penitence is not a shrivelling of the spirit, an approach to life that leads to a hardened heart and harsh judgments of others. Undertaken in the right spirit, it opens the door to love. By restraining one's material desires, a person acts in solidarity with those who suffer involuntarily and with Christ who suffered that we might have eternal life.

Personally, I hate engaging in acts of penitence and I recoil from any hardship. Far be it from me to lecture others. But penitence would hardly be penitence if one looked forward to it. The flesh needs to be curtailed so that the spirit can live.

Glen Argan

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