Lent: a time for God’s gift of healing

There are always questions that arise each year when it comes to the season of Lent, even if we do celebrate it year after year: What is Lent? Why do we observe it? What is penance, exactly? What am I supposed to do or not to do?

What is the Season of Lent?

At its heart, Lent is a season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending at sundown on Holy Thursday. At this point, the Easter Triduum begins, and Christians enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s Passion before Easter.

The Easter Triduum?

The final week of Lent is called Holy Week, a period of more intense prayer and self-sacrifice.  The week ends with the Easter Triduum.  The word is derived from a Latin root that mean “three days,” it is a period that traces the final days of Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection from the dead.

PENANCE should be a regular aspect of the life of all men and women who follow Christ.  The season of Lent, however, is set aside especially by the Church as a time for a special focus on penance.  Because it is a calling for all Christians, it becomes more than just a private devotion, it serves as a way for the Church to grow in faith together. 

What is penance?

Although the term penance might sound a bit strange to modern ears, it is not all about hardship and burdensome tasks to be carried out in the hope of gaining something from God.  It is about growing in our relationship with God.  It is not meant to be seen as a form of suffering.  From a biblical and church perspective it is celebrated as a virtue.   It is something meant to be a part of our ongoing lives as disciples of Christ, an arsenal given to us by God that we may find the Way of the Kingdom inaugurated and proclaimed by the life, death, resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.

Traditionally, there are two parts to penance and one is incomplete without the other:  (1) contrition for sin and (2) making amends for sin.

It is a basic requirement of justice that if we steal something, we should return it; if somebody injures themselves because of us, we should compensate them in some way; if we break something, we should fix it. Seen in this way, justice is about healing what’s broken.

 It might not always be something that we can do directly to the person “offended against”, but we can always make amends by directing that compensation to someone in need, to a charity or another third party.  If I steal $100 from "A" I may not be able to return the money, so I give $100 to "B", perhaps a charity working with the poor or the homeless.  The point is that I do not benefit from my sins.

Penance is the same in our relationship with God: it is about turning ourselves back to God when we wander away when we have broken the covenant of love into which we are drawn through Jesus Christ.  It is best understood as a healing process, a balm to a spiritual injury incurred by sin.

With this understanding, we can then view prayer as a form of penance.  Why?  Because we take time out of our lives, our often-busy lives, and forget about ourselves.  It is twenty minutes we could have used for our self-interests but instead, offer that time to God.    It is a form of penance because it is out turning back to God. 

LENT is a penitential season, a time for us to make a radical reorientation of our lives back to God, a time for penance to be front and centre in our thinking. 

Through our Lenten disciplines, the Spirit leads us to true conversion and repentance. This conversion, however, is primarily the work of grace.  That means penance is something God does in us, and to us as we strive to listen to the Holy Spirit that has been poured into our lives at Baptism.  This makes Lent primarily a season of grace, a time we allow divine grace to soften our hearts and God has a little more say in the way we live.  It is not primarily a time of self-denial, or hardship and suffering.    It is not about putting on sackcloth and covering ourselves in ashes.

Penance and confession:  the sacraments

In the Christian tradition, various terms can sometimes be used for ‘penance”:  Reconciliation/ Confession/Reconciliation.

In this sense, penance is a sacrament, one of the two sacraments of healing (the other is the Anointing of the Sick). Over the years, and in different places, the names for this sacrament have been used interchangeably.

It is sometimes called the sacrament of Penance because this is the way a person can acknowledge their sins, “confess” them and receive God’s forgiveness through the ministry of the Church.

It is sometimes, and probably most frequently, called the sacrament of Reconciliation. This emphasises the essence of the sacrament: the reassurance of God’s reconciling and forgiving love for the person confessing their sins.

Two other terms are associated with this sacrament. One is ‘conversion’, because through this sacrament our hearts and minds are turned from our sinful ways to living a life according to God’s way. Another is ‘forgiveness’, because when we faithfully confess our sins, we are assured of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

In the Anglican Church, the Sacrament of Penance is a practice where a person confesses their sins to a priest and receives absolution and guidance, aiming to restore their relationship with God and the Church (other people). 

Anglican Tradition:

Private confession and absolution are part of the Anglican tradition, but they are not mandatory.  Anglicans do have a corporate confession, where the congregation confesses sins collectively during the liturgy. This is a part of every Eucharistic celebration, though it is all too often rushed through without giving it too much attention. 

The Book of Common Prayer and earlier Anglican prayer books do not have a prescribed ceremony for private confession outside of the Visitation of the Sick, but it is available for those who cannot quiet their conscience through the general confession. Its biblical roots are found in the promise of Jesus himself in John 20:23… If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Lent is not just about ‘giving something up’

Far from it!  Yes, “giving up” something for Lent is one part of the season – if it is a genuine challenge for us to put those things aside for the forty days.  If there is a “cost” to it, then we are truly making a sacrificial act and that helps reorient us towards God and away from a constant self-orientation. 

The other two key elements are prayer and almsgiving.   These two are very much about ‘taking something up’, adding something to our lives to acknowledge the debt we have before God, a debt Jesus paid for us on the cross.  

Lenten fasting and abstinence?

In Christianity, fasting is a spiritual practice involving voluntary abstaining from food (or other things) for a specific time and purpose, aiming to deepen faith, seek God, and humble oneself before Him. 

Biblical Background:

Fasting is voluntarily going without food — or any other regularly enjoyed, good gift from God — for the sake of some spiritual purpose. It is markedly countercultural in our consumerist society, like abstaining from sex until marriage.

If we are to learn the lost art of fasting and enjoy its fruit, we need to begin with a biblical perspective. Jesus assumes his followers will fast and even promises it will happen. He does not say “if,” but “when you fast” (Matt 6:16). And he does not say his followers might fast, but “they will” (Matt 9:15).

We fast in this life because we believe in the life to come. We do not have to accumulate it all here and now.  We have a promise that we will have it all in the coming age. We fast from what we can see and taste, because we have tasted and seen the goodness of the invisible and infinite God — and are desperately hungry for more of him.

Old Testament:

Joel 2:12: "Even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning." 

Isaiah 58:6: "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and to break every yoke?" 

Exodus 34:28: "He was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water." 

Daniel 10:3: "I ate no pleasant food, and no meat or wine touched my mouth, and I did not anoint myself at all, for three weeks." 

1 Samuel 7:6: "Then they gathered together in Mizpah, and they fasted, and they poured out water before the Lord." 

Psalm 35:13: "But as for me, when they were sick, I put on sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting; and my prayer returned to my own bosom." 

Psalm 69:10: "When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, that became my reproach." 

New Testament:

Matthew 6:16-18: "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that you may not be seen to be fasting by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." 

Luke 4:2: "Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by the devil. And in those days he ate nothing, and when they were ended, he was hungry." 

Mark 9:29: "And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could not we cast it out?' And he said unto them, 'This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.'" 

Acts 13:2: "While they were offering worship and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have for them.'" 

Acts 14:23: "And when they had appointed them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they had believed." 

Types of Fasting: 

Complete Fast: Abstaining from all food, drinking only water. 

 Partial Fast: Abstaining from certain foods or types of food, such as meat, dairy, alcohol or sweets. 

Daniel Fast: Abstaining from meat and "pleasant foods" like dairy, desserts, and soda. 

John Wesley Fast: Abstaining from food from sundown to sundown. 

Other Forms: Fasting can also involve abstaining from activities like TV, social media, or excessive talking, allowing time for prayer and spiritual focus. 

Not a Means to an End: 

Fasting is not intended as a way to force God's hand or earn His favour, but rather as a tool for spiritual discipline and seeking God's guidance. 

Focus on Prayer and Seeking God: 

During a fast, believers are encouraged to spend the time they would normally spend eating in prayer, meditation, and studying scripture. 

Penance as acknowledging our sins before God

Do Anglicans celebrate Penance?

This comes as a surprise to some Anglicans but there is a rite of confession in our Anglican tradition.  While it is not obligatory, to live faithfully our catholic vocations in the Anglican Rite, we are encouraged to celebrate the Sacrament of Penance at least once a year, preferably in Holy Week or Eastertide, in preparation for the making of one’s Easter Communion.

We should appreciate that this Sacrament is vitally important and should certainly be received by any person who is troubled and distressed in conscience because of sin. It is not all about sin, though.  It is beneficial for all Christians seeking to deepen their spiritual life and to advance in holiness.

The great saints and holy men and women of the Church spoke and wrote about the spiritual value in celebrating this sacrament prior to receiving Our Lord’s Body and Blood in the Holy Communion.  We do this in all humility, lest we approach the altar rails in a state of sin.  This might not always be physically possible, which is why there is, built into our liturgies, a time for a communal confession. 

As the 1662 English Prayer Book reminds us in the exhortation at the Mass: ‘let him (a penitent) come to me, or to some other… Minister of God’s Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God’s holy word he may receive the benefit of Absolution, as may tend to the quieting of the conscience, and the removing of all scruple and doubtfulness.’

Confession: All may, none must, most should.

All Anglicans in the catholic tradition are encouraged to use this sacramental gift as an aide in their spiritual growth.  The sacrament is a means by which God increases grace, guarantees forgiveness of sins, and provides an opportunity for the penitent to examine their conscience, explore the consequences of their sins and opens them up to the work of the Spirit in amending their lives.

Nobody really enjoys going to confession.  It is usually painful, can be embarrassing and it is difficult to take that first step in approaching God who is working through the ministry of the Church, in the person of the priest.    What we do find, something that makes the “pain” all that more worthwhile, is that its ultimate benefits and graces for the soul far outweigh the personal “pain”. God does great things for us in all of the sacraments of the Church.

Penance clearly has an important function within the life of the Church, especially for those who are troubled in soul after having committed sins or who are sick or near death and wish to enter Paradise free from all stain of sin. However, we are encouraged to use this Sacrament at every opportunity for our spiritual welfare. The saints speak of it as being a ‘school of sanctity,’ a teacher of repentance and amendment of life.  This is because it is God and God alone who forgives sins and communicates His life, through the ministry of the Church to whom God entrusted this sacrament...Matthew 20:23… If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

What is the spiritual context for the sacrament of penance?

There are three important elements to penance:

1.      Repentance. True repentance from sin begins with contrition, which is a true sorrow of the heart for sins committed. Without contrition, there is no desire for forgiveness and for the amendment of life and so therefore there is no need for confession. We have reached the point where we have convinced ourselves that we have no sins.

Contrition is the hatred of sin; it is a hatred that comes about because of the love we have for God and that love of God, the love God has for us, that makes sins so terrible. A contrite heart sees sins as an outrage against God’s love for us.  Without contrition, there can be no sacramental healing, no reconciliation.  

Real repentance through contrition brings us reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of sins. Our repentance flows from our love for God and for God’s Church. However, contrition is the true source of real, life-changing, life-healing repentance.

2.      Confession.  When we are truly repentant, truly contrite for our sins, we will naturally seek to confess our sins.  This is our acknowledgement of what we have done that aggrieves the God of love.  It is one thing to have a sense of sorrow in our minds, it is another indeed to lay them out before the Lord in sacramental setting of the Church, the Body of Christ.   It is there we verbalise our intent.

Real confession is self-accusation, the truthful and honest admission of speaking, acting, and thinking wrongly. The fact that we confess our sins demonstrates that we are truly sorry for those sins, honestly and fully repentant. Confession, a sincere and sorrowful acknowledgment to God of our sins, is the proof of contrition, and of our desire to be forgiven and to be granted the grace to change.

In Penance, we are healed, sanctified and transformed by Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. In the Anglican Rite, this is the traditional Confession prayer:

“I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and to all the Saints, and to thee Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault – and especially I confess I have committed the following sins … – For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am heartily sorry, I firmly purpose amendment of life; I humbly ask pardon and forgiveness of God and of thee, Father, penance, counsel, and absolution: Wherefore I beg Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and all the Saints, and thee Father, to pray for me to the LORD our God. Amen.”

3.      Amendment of life.   It is here we take up the spiritual challenge of living the sacrament.  We must forsake sin and change our lives— this is the ultimate test of genuine repentance; amendment is the sustained and determined resolve to sin no more and to live a better and holier life. It does not mean we will never sin again.  It means we commit to living closer and closer to God in and through Jesus his Son, picking ourselves up when we fall.

 If we have hurt others, we must make restitution for the injuries done. Real repentance demands that we do better, and change, by God’s grace.  This is why; to signify this commitment, the priest will generally give the penitent disciple a spiritual action to perform. – called a penance. Carrying out this penance with a willing heart is a demonstration of our willingness to amend our lives.  It also provides us with an opportunity to contemplate the transformation that is required for the health of our soul.