Salesian Literature

Chapter 19:  Penance without love is imperfect

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We are taught all those motives by faith, by the Christian religion.  The penance to which they lead, therefore, is most praiseworthy.  For all that, however, it is certainly an imperfect penance: as yet, God’s love finds no place there.  Such forms of repentance (don’t you see?) are all in the soul’s self-interest – for the sake of its bliss, its inner beauty, its glory, its dignity; in a word, for love of self.  Still, that love is lawful, sound and well-ordered.

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Notice, I am not saying that these types of repentance cut out the love of God; I am only saying that they do not include it.  They do not reject it, but they do not contain it; they are not opposed to it, but so far they lack it; it is not locked out, but it has not yet been let in.

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When the will chooses what is good, purely and simply, it is a good will.  But if the choice of one good means the rejection of something better, then obviously the will is disordered – not because it accepted what was good, but because it rejected what was better.

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It is good to begin a good thing, better to continue it, best of all to finish it.  At all events, beginning a thing is good as a beginning; continuing a thing is good as a continuation.  However, to want to make the end of something in beginning it, or continuing it, is to put the cart before the horse.  Childhood is good, but the intention of never growing up would be bad; we have no time for a childish centenarian (cf. Is. 65:20).  To begin to learn is very creditable; but to begin to learn with the intention of never fully grasping a subject is absolute nonsense.  Fear, and the other motives of repentance which I have mentioned, are good in the first stages of Christian wisdom, which consists in penance.  But for a man to mean, of set purpose, never to rise to love – the perfection of penance – would be to sin gravely against God, who has planned all things out of love, love being their goal.

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St. Paul could say: I may give away all that I have, to feed the poor: I may give myself up to be burned at the stake; if I lack charity, it goes nor nothing (1 Cor. 13:3).  We can truly echo his words: were our penance so great that it caused our eyes to melt in tears, our hearts to break with grief – all that would count for nothing as regards eternal life, if we lacked the love of God.

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