Ash Wednesday 2022 – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church, Burns, Oregon; March 2, 2022

Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation. Now, today, at this moment, God offers
us his grace and his mercy. It is the grace to be reconciled to God; it is the grace of repentance
of sin; it is the grace of forgiveness given in the sacrament of penance; it is the grace that opens
us for the grace of justification, sanctifying grace, growth in grace, that we might become the
righteousness of God in Christ.

He who was rich became poor for our sake, so that by his poverty we might become rich. (cf. 2
Cor 8:9) The true wealth of Jesus Christ is his divine life and nature; the poverty he took from us
is our human nature; through his sacred humanity, nailed to the Cross, he has poured out on us
the wealth of his divine life and nature, called in its beginning ‘the grace of justification’ and in
its stable reality ‘sanctifying grace’, the grace that makes us truly to be children of God. (1 Jn
3:1) This is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, through which he dwells in us as in a temple. (cf. 1
Cor 6:19) Together with the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gift of sanctifying grace, Jesus Christ,
bestows on us every spiritual blessing in the heavens, so that we might grow in holiness and live
as children of God. (Cf. Eph 1:3) All this is the beginning in eternal life in us. Already it gives us in
this world to taste of an incomparable joy. Yet the joy of grace in this life is itself but a distant
echo of the glory of the vision of God.

All of this starts with repentance and, for those who are already baptized, it is renewed through
confession. In the words of both St. John the Baptist and Jesus: Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand. (Mt 3:2; 4:17)

This past Sunday I spoke about the basic requirements of confession: contrition, purpose of
amendment, and the actual confession of sins to the priest. I also spoke about the necessary
prelude to confession, examination of conscience. I did not, however, speak of the follow-up,
the assigned penance.

What is penance? Penance is what we do to make up to God for the damage done by our sin.
Here we can think of the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears. She had
already been forgiven much, because she already loved much. Her tears were a work of
penitential love. (cf. Lk 7:36-50)

In human affairs too, it is not enough to say you are sorry and be forgiven, you must try to
make up for what you have done; you must seek to repair the harm you have done to others;
you must pay for the broken window, so to speak.

The word ‘penance’ comes from the Latin word for ‘punishment’, which suggests something
imposed upon us; it can also be called ‘atonement’ or ‘expiation’, which focuses rather on what we voluntarily undertake and at least accept. The penance should be freely accepted, the
expiation freely undertaken, both should be made an offering to God through the Blood of
Christ, the source of all merit before him.

St. John tells us, the blood of Jesus … cleanses us from all sin. (1 Jn 1:7) Protestants misinterpret
this passage to imply that we do not need to do penance and this poisonous distortion has
entered into the mentality of Catholics. St. John is writing to those who are already baptized;
the blood of Jesus cleanses us through our works of penance.

Through his death on the Cross, Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, made up for all the sins
that ever have or ever will be committed. He offered a full and complete expiation or
satisfaction to his Father for our sins. When we were baptized, whether as infant or adult, we
were not only freed, by the Blood of Christ, of every burden of sin, but we were also freed of all
obligation to make up for past sins, to do penance for our past sins, to offer satisfaction.

Another way of speaking of this is that the debt of original sin is loss of heaven; the debt of
mortal sin is eternal damnation or eternal suffering; the debt of all sin is present suffering or
temporal punishment. Baptism frees the soul from both the eternal and temporal punishment.
That is a one-time affair.

Alas, after baptism we continue to commit sin, at least venial sins. Through the sacrament of
penance, we are freed again of the debt of eternal punishment, but the absolution does not
free us from the debt of temporal punishment, the obligation to do penance, to make up for
our sins, especially to make up for the negligence and ingratitude we have shown for the
inestimable gift of God’s grace already given us in our baptism. The assigned penance gets us
started, but usually it is not enough, we need to practice penance on our own.

The typical penance given in confession is some prayers. Prayer as a penance reminds us that
first of all sin offends God and harms our relationship with him and so that relationship must be
restored by means of prayer, which lies at the heart of our relationship with God.

All the works of penance are summed up under the headings mentioned in today’s Gospel:
almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. More generally we could speak of ‘works of mercy’, prayer, and
works of self-denial. The works of mercy bear on our relationship to others; the works of prayer
directly on our relation to God; the works of self-denial help us gain mastery over ourselves.

We should practice penance at all times, but especially during the season of Lent, when we are
given a special grace to undertake works of penance, on our own behalf and for the sake of
others. Indeed, in union with the Blood of Christ, we can offer satisfaction to God also for the
sins of others. The spirit of penance is badly needed in our own day, a time when everyone
wants to blame others, but few want to take responsibility themselves.

Job used to offer sacrifices in case his children had sinned. (cf. Jb 1:5) I once heard about a
father of a family who each time a child was born renounced, for the rest of his life, some small
pleasure, as an offering to God, for the sake of the child.

I think one place where the practice of penance really needs to be discovered is when people
struggle with feelings of guilt over sins already forgiven in the confessional. Because of the
ongoing guilt they wonder if their sins have truly been forgiven. Maybe the problem lies
elsewhere – it is not that the sins haven’t been forgiven, but that they have not yet been fully
expiated. Feelings of guilt can be a call from God to practice penance.

When we undertake works of penance, whether works of mercy, prayers, or self-denial, we
should be stretching ourselves, there should be some difficulty involved, but at the same time
we must not overdo it. In this matter it is important to be guided by a prudent confessor or
spiritual director.

Finally, we must take heed to the words of our Lord in today’s Gospel: Take care not to perform
your righteous deeds in order that people may see them. The practice of penance bears on our
relationship with God; it is not a public-relations stunt to recoup a fiasco on our part. Our
relationship with God is lived in the secret sanctuary of our heart where the Father sees in
secret.

It is hard to reach that special place in our heart; penance is the way to get there. Once we are
there, once we learn to live in the presence of our heavenly Father, then we will learn what is
truly important in life; then our priorities will be set in order.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things shall be yours as well.
(Mt 6:33)