Annually, January 22 is designated as a particular day of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life and of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion” (GIRM, n. 373). As a national day of penance, vicarious suffering for the tragic decisions of others needs to be properly understood.
The Church Fathers have often compared the Church’s origin to that of Eve. As Adam’s spouse, she was formed from his side as he slept in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, the Church as the Bride of Christ comes to life through the blood and water flowing from Lord’s opened side as He slept in death upon the Cross. In baptism, then, each of us is a brother or sister belonging to this Mother. Indeed, every member of the faithful is a cell of the mystical bride of Christ. When one of us is wounded, all of us feel pain. When one of us sins, all of us are affected by the fall. But the opposite is also true: When one prays, does penance and grows in holiness, the entire Church can benefit from God’s saving grace. It’s incredibly easy for the guilty party to use things like penance as a sort of tool for dissolving the true guilt for actual sins in a sort of collective pool of “Well, we’re all sinners” or even “Hey! You are to blame for letting me sin!” or some other blame-shifting. Various acts of penance do not mean “take the fall and bear the blame so that guilty people can skate or dissolve their sense of responsibility for the crimes.”
Penance, in the Catholic tradition, is our participation in the innocent suffering of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. The tradition tells us that Christ who knew no sin, became sin for our sake so that we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus bore the sins of the world, but He did not commit the sins of the world or any sin for that matter. He was blameless, and opened not His mouth, says Isaiah (Is 53:7). Similarly, in Christ, Saint Paul declares that “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church (Col 1:24). That does not mean that Jesus did not do enough so that we have to make up for His well-meaning but inadequate effort on the Cross. Rather, it means that as Christians, we bear the Cross with Jesus and offer our innocent sufferings in union with His for the good of others—including others who are sinners and patently guilty.
On the other hand, part of the nature of the Christian faith is that it recognizes the fact of human solidarity. You neither personally ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, nor handled the hammers that drove nails through the flesh of the Son of God. Yet, in some mysterious sense, when those sins were committed, all of us were implicated in them. Jesus’ death occurred because we, the human race, killed the Savior of the world—and therefore, by the miracle of grace, Jesus died for us all and now offers His grace to us all. It is in the awareness of that radical solidarity with one other and with Jesus that we can offer penance for another’s sins.
Penance means that as members of the Body of Christ in union with the innocent Christ crucified, we can offer our innocent sufferings and acts of self-denial and prayer so that the evil of these sins can be purged from the Church and the world. Our prayers and sacrifices, offered in dutiful penance, become sacramental, not simply isolated events that have nothing to do with the common good. Whether the sinner repents or not is not within our power to determine or to make happen because that is between the sinner and God. Instead, on behalf of sinners, you make an offering of your life in union with Jesus who said, “Forgive them,” which is within your power.
And those offerings, accepted by God as fragrant sacrifices can be and have been powerful instruments of conversion for sinners. Nobody knew that better than Paul himself, whose conversion began with Stephen’s penitential offering of his own life for the men (including Saul of Tarsus) who were made to murder him and for whom he prayed, “Lord, do not count this sin against them.”
Excerpted from “Doing Penance for Others” by Mark Shea. National Catholic Register. 19 April 2010.
Nature and dignity 