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Penance in the Early Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Edward Booth O.P.
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THE full significance of our Lord's ‘Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God’ (Matt, v, 8) is only to be understood in a setting of worship. Behind it is the thought of the psalm: ‘Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord; or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and the clean of heart…’ (Ps. xxiii, 31f). Man must become pure in his inmost being; and he must do so as a preparation for worship. But the man who conceives such desires discovers within himself impeding faults. These cause him grief; and the acknowledgment of being in such a state is to be penitent. Penitence as a prelude to the sacrifice of worship is the theme of Ps. 1: ‘A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 14 , Issue 157 , July 1959 , pp. 18 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 ad Philad. 11. This is from a section of which only a Latin version has been preserved, which lessens our certainty about its meaning.

2 Behind this is Heb. x, 26: 'For if we sin wilfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins'. According to P. Galtier, Aux Origines du Sacrement de Pénitence, this would seem to refer to lapsing back simply into Jewish practices. It seems that too rigorist an interpretation comes from taking it out of its context (op. cit, p. 80 ff).