Salesian Literature

Chapter 20:  The blending of love and sorrow that is contrition

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Amid the remorse and sorrow of fervent repentance God often hides the fire of his love in the depths of our hearts.  This love then changes into the water of countless tears which – by a second transformation – bursts into another greater blaze of love.  It was in this way that the famous penitent lover began to love her Saviour.  Her love turned into tears, her tears into perfect love, so that Our Lord remarked: if great sins have been forgiven her, she has also greatly loved. (Lk. 7:47).

 

Penance is the result of a loving reflection on God’s goodness, on the fact that sin has offended what is supremely loveable.  That is why perfect penance has two distinct effects: its sorrow and distaste detach us from sin, from the created thing to which pleasure bound us; its love, from which it springs, heals the breach between ourselves and God, reunites us to him whom we had set at naught, from whom we broke away.  While it recalls us from sin, then, through repentance, it restores us to union with God through love.

 

This is not to say that perfect love of God, by which we love him more than anything else, always precedes repentance; nor that repentance always precedes love.  That is not my meaning at all.  Although it frequently happens that way, there are other times when, as soon as charity comes to birth in our hearts, penance is born in the love; sometimes too, when penance makes its way into the soul, love is already growing out of the penance.

 

When Esau was born, his twin brother Jacob followed, clutching his brother’s heel, to give the impression of one birth, rather than two consecutive ones (cf. Gen. 25:25).  In the same way, repentance – as it were another Esau – is the first to come, harsh and bitter from its sorrow; but love – gentle and gracious as Jacob – follows so closely on it heels, there is but a single birth.  The completion of the birth of repentance sees the beginning of perfect love.  Just as Esau was the first to appear, so repentance usually shows itself before love; but love – as it were another Jacob – although only the second-born, quickly supplants repentance, turning it into consolation.

 

Picture to yourself, Theotimus, the beloved Magdalene weeping from love …They have carried away my Lord, she said, and I cannot tell where they have taken him (Jn. 20:13).  Once here tears and sighs had found him, however, her love grasped him, made him her own.  Imperfect love longs for him, cries out for him; repentance seeks him, finds his; perfect love grasps him, holds him close.  The love which precedes repentance is usually imperfect; once it is dipped in the bitterness of penance, however, it intensifies, becomes perfect.

 

In a word, then: the beginning of charity blends with the completion of repentance; and, in that blending, penance and contrition merit eternal life.

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