CHAPTER IV

CONTRITION

We have endeavoured to show from Holy Scripture that God has appointed a means, instituted a Sacrament, by which we may obtain both the forgiveness of our sins and the assurance that we are forgiven, and through which we may further receive grace to resist sin in the future, and the restoration of our merits, of the treasure which we have laid up in heaven. We have pointed out also that our Church in its Prayer Book clearly draws attention to this Sacrament, asserting that God has given power and commandment, to His Ministers, to declare and pronounce to His people, being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins, and calling upon all who cannot quiet their own consciences to use this means of grace. We must now consider on what conditions we can obtain this Absolution. The conditions are three: Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction; that is, sorrow for sin, acknowledgment of sin, and reparation and amendment. Let us begin with Contrition. What is Contrition? Sorrow for sin, but not

every sort of sorrow; for S. Paul, treating of repentance, points out that "godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. The sorrow of the world for sin is a selfish sorrow for the consequences of sin, a sorrow on account of what have lost by our sin we the joy of our communion with God here, and the happiness of heaven hereafter; or it is a sorrow caused by the fear of punishment for our sin, whether we regard the penal results of sin in this life (and they are many), or the eternal punishment of sin in hell in the world to come.

Contrition, the godly sorrow for sin, is an unselfish sorrow which flows in our souls, from the love of God, from the thought, not that we have lost heaven, not that we have merited hell, but that we have outraged God's love God Who is so good to us, God Who is our Father in heaven; that by our sin we have crucified afresh our Lord Jesus Christ, treating His sufferings for us as though they had been nothing; and that by our sin we have grieved, perhaps quenched, the Holy Spirit in our souls.

It is not easy to stir up in our cold, selfish hearts real Contrition, the sorrow which springs from the love of God, and often we have to begin with an 1 2 Cor. vii. 10.

inferior sorrow which theologians call "Attrition," and which arises from fear rather than from love. In Attrition there must be at least a detestation of sin, and a resolve to sin no more; but it differs from Contrition in the motive of this detestation. Perfect Contrition flows, as we have seen, from love; Attrition from some other supernatural motive (supernatural in that it is apprehended by faith), such as the fear of the punishment or the loss which sin involves.

And yet we must not despise this inferior sorrow or Attrition; for it may be the beginning of something better. S. Augustine, in his commentary on the first Epistle of S. John, when treating of the words "Perfect love casteth out fear," remarks that fear is like the needle, and love like the thread which we use in sewing. The needle is necessary to puncture the material and make a way for the thread to follow; but the needle has to be drawn out in order that the thread may follow and remain in the material, and hold all the work together. Many a repentance, therefore, may begin with fear and end with love the fear first piercing the hard heart with compunction, and the love flowing in afterwards and binding the soul to God.

As we read the lives of the saints we find that this has often been the case even in those who

have afterwards attained to great holiness.

was meditation on the awful results of sin in eternity which first made them turn their thoughts to God and to penitence, and then the Holy Spirit working in them enabled them so to repent from love of God, that this perfect love cast out the fear and united them to God in the bonds of divine charity.

It is not easy to obtain true Contrition, and we may well ask what we can do to gain it, what there is to help us to be sorry for our sins.

First, there is meditation on the love of God, His goodness manifested to us in our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of our life, His patience in having waited for us so long, His gracious Providence which has brought us within reach of the teaching of the Church and the means of grace. All our sins have been against God, from whom we have received nothing but goodness and mercy and love, and whom gratitude alone should constrain us to serve most faithfully.

Secondly, we may consider the malice of sin, its terrible results upon others, the happiness it has blighted, the health it has destroyed, the homes it has ruined; and then its effects upon ourselves, what it has done to injure, what it will do to destroy all that is good in us, if we do not repent.

Thirdly, and chiefly, we must meditate on the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and see there

what our sins did to Him Who so loved us that He

died for us.

We must, however, carefully bear in mind that Contrition is not to be measured by emotional excitement; for this may be manifested in some temperaments where there is no real love of God, and no true sorrow for sin. We are taught by our Lord and His Apostles, and by the Church, that we are to judge of our religious state, not by our feelings, but by the fruits which we produce. Feelings may be accompaniments to Contrition, which beautify it, as the leaves beautify a tree; and they may help us to inhale, as it were, the goodness and love of God, as the leaves enable the tree to breathe in the carbon which it needs for its tissue. But our Lord in cursing the fig-tree1 shows us that He seeks something more than leaves that He demands fruit. On his way from Bethany to Jerusalem on Monday in Holy Week, He saw a figtree which attracted His attention by its leaves, and, seeking fruit but finding leaves only, He cursed it, and it withered away.

We must, therefore, look carefully for the signs of our Contrition, not in what we feel but in what we do. S. Paul gives the signs of repentance in the passage we have already quoted, saying, "For behold this selfsame thing that ye sorrowed after

1 S. Mark xi. 13-14.