April 6, 2025 - Pastor Message
May 18, 2025JUBILEE 2025 THE ACT OF CONTRITION (cont.)
JUBILEE 2025
THE ACT OF CONTRITION (cont.)
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because of your just punishments, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen” (The Order of Penance, 92).
Continuing our jubilee year reflection on the celebration of God’s mercy in the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, this week we begin our look at the Act of Contrition. This prayer expresses our sorrow for our sins and our firm purpose of amendment, both of which are necessary dispositions for receiving the healing grace of the sacrament. While making an act of contrition is ordinarily required in the celebration of the sacrament, the particular form our prayer takes is not. We are free to use whatever prayer of contrition we wish, as long as it in some way expresses these two dispositions. In fact, the Order of Penance, the official ritual book, offers several different examples of possible acts of contrition.
I have included one example from the Order of Penance above that is perhaps the most traditional form and one with which many of us are familiar. It is also very helpful for understanding just what we mean when we talk about contrition. I will break it down and examine each part more closely with the hope that this study may help all of us deepen our contrition and instill in us the need to go to confession, especially during Lent and Easter and even more so during this jubilee year.
“O my God” - Like all prayer, our act of contrition lifts our minds and hearts to God. He is the focus of our prayer, not ourselves and certainly not our sins. Only by holding our minds and hearts up to his holy light can we begin to see the shadows and stains of our sins, the very places we need him to shine his purifying light, and so the first step of contrition is turning our attention to God.
“I am heartily sorry for having offended you” - While the subject of this part of the prayer is “I”, the focus stays on God. I am “heartily sorry”, that is, not just a little sorry or emotionally sorry, feeling bad about what I did because I broke some rule or social standard. I am fully sorry, with my whole heart, the very core of my being, because, by my sins, I have ripped myself away from the source and goal of my being, God. I have set my soul adrift, lost on a path of utter darkness and destruction, because I have separated myself from my God, and only in a loving relationship with him do I have any hope in life. This is the first necessary disposition to receive God’s mercy, a true sorrow for my sins because I have broken my relationship with God.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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