How to Grow in Penance

“Unless you repent, you will all perish”

Penance is not advice for elite souls: in Christ’s mouth, it is a condition of salvation laid upon everyone. Before those who wonder about recent misfortunes, Jesus refuses to single out culprits and turns the question back on his listeners:

“Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke 13:3.5^[2]

The sentence is repeated twice, a few verses apart—a sign of its weight. And it is not an isolated demand: the very first word of Jesus’ public preaching, like that of John the Baptist before him, is a call to penance: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mt 4:17; cf. Mk 1:15)^[3]. The first word joins the call to turn one’s heart back and the call to believe: “Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15)—it is through a heart that turns back that truth concretely enters.

A virtue, not a passing wave of sadness

Penance is often reduced to a passing mood: remorse after a fault, a burst of fervor during Lent. But the Catholic tradition has always held it to be a virtue—that is, a stable disposition that durably inclines the soul toward a good, and, in the supernatural order, infused by God: “insofar as it is a habit, it is given to us immediately by God […] but not, however, without our cooperating with the divine action” (III, q. 85, a. 5). Saint Thomas thus establishes that penance—sorrowing over past sin as an offense against God, with the intention of putting it away—is a virtue, and even “a special virtue” (III, q. 85, a. 1–2^[4]): its proper object, destroying past sin insofar as it is an offense against God, is found in no other virtue.

This precision changes everything for anyone who wants to “grow” in penance. One does not grow in an emotion: one grows in a virtue. Penance, therefore, is not an intensity of tears to attain, but a disposition received from God and exercised by man, by repeated acts that cooperate with grace, until it becomes like a second nature. That is the whole point of this article.

Penance, the “second plank after shipwreck”

Why is this virtue so necessary? Because the baptized person who falls again into mortal sin has lost baptismal innocence, and nothing restores it to him except penance. Tradition expresses this with a nautical image: baptism is the ship; when one has been shipwrecked by sin, penance is the plank to cling to so as not to drown. The image is attested among the Fathers—notably Saint Jerome (Letter 130, to Demetrias, § 9) and Tertullian (On Penance, 4, 2, cited in CCC § 1446). The Council of Trent, for its part, teaches concerning the sacrament its necessity for salvation for those who have fallen after baptism:

“This sacrament of penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after baptism, as baptism itself is for those who have not yet been regenerated.” — Council of Trent, session XIV (1551), Doctrine on the sacrament of penance, ch. 2 (DS 1672)^[5]

Trent speaks here first of all of the sacrament—absolution received—of which the virtue of penance is the interior disposition: it is through it that the sinner turns toward forgiveness, without the return depending on fervor alone. Penance is not a spiritual luxury: it is, for the sinner, the very way back. Growing in it is learning never to despair of that return—and to make it ever quicker, deeper, and more lasting.

The three meanings of the word “penance”

The word penance covers, in Catholic language, three distinct realities which must be kept separate so as not to take the wrong road. This article concerns the first—the virtue—but it can only be understood in relation to the other two.

All three are linked: the virtue inclines one toward the sacrament, which imposes a satisfaction. But one can outwardly go through the rite without the required dispositions: a routine confession, without sorrow for sin or resolution to sin no more, does not validly receive forgiveness—contrition or at least attrition is required (CCC § 1451–1453^[6]). Likewise, one can practice satisfactions without virtue (privations without love). Growing in penance means first of all making the root grow—the virtue, that is, the dispositions of the penitent—without forgetting that forgiveness itself is the work of Christ acting in the sacrament, not the fruit of our fervor. A later relapse, moreover, does not by itself prove that repentance was lacking at the moment of confession.

Interior penance: metanoia, conversion of heart

The heart of the virtue is not in exterior works, but in the interior turning. The Catechism states this with a firmness that dispels all confusion:

“As already with the prophets, Jesus’ call to conversion and penance does not aim first at outward works, ‘sackcloth and ashes,’ fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior penance. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; interior conversion, on the other hand, urges the expression of this attitude in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1430^[7]

This interior penance, the Catechism defines as a total turning:

“Interior penance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1431^[8]

The Fathers of the Church gave a name to the salutary pain that accompanies this turning: compunctio cordis, contrition of heart—literally, the heart “pierced,” awakened from its numbness^[9]. This is the living soil of all penance: without interior conversion, the rest is only a façade.

Exterior penance: the body follows the heart

Should we therefore despise exterior works—fasts, vigils, mortifications? Not at all. The same Catechism immediately specifies that interior conversion “pushes to expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance”^[10]. Man is not a pure spirit: what the heart decides, the body must learn. Fasting teaches the soul to say no; almsgiving teaches it detachment; prayer keeps it turned toward God. Exterior penance is at the service of interior penance, as the gesture is at the service of the intention.

The danger, then, is not doing works: it is doing them without the heart, or believing they dispense one from the heart. A deprivation that does not convert is only a diet; a candle lit without repentance is only an expense. But a sincere conversion that would translate into no act at all would also be suspect of unreality. The two dimensions call for each other.

“Do penance” or “repent”?

The attentive reader notices that modern translations of the Gospel often say “Repent” where older ones said “Do penance” (Latin paenitentiam agite). This is not a betrayal but a clarification. The Greek metanoeite first means change your mind and heart; the Latin Vulgate rendered it as paenitentiam agite, “do penance,” which emphasizes reparation. Both express one face of the same reality: to repent (the turning) and to do penance (to bear its weight). The Gospel is impoverished if one keeps only one of the two—either a conversion without effort, or works without heart. The virtue of penance holds the two together.

The virtue of penance according to Saint Thomas

Saint Thomas places penance among the species of justice. This can surprise: one might expect it to belong to temperance or humility. But his logic is luminous. Sin is an offense—that is, a debt toward God; now, rendering to each his due is the proper work of justice. The penitent acts in justice when he sorrows over his sin as an offense against God and purposes to repair it—for repairing an offense requires, besides the cessation of the offense, a compensation, and this compensation is a matter of justice (paraphrase after III, q. 85, a. 3^[11]):

“It is therefore evident that penance, as a virtue, is a part of justice.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 85, a. 3

This analysis has a practical consequence: penance is not a matter of feeling, but of a right will. One can be penitent without shedding tears, provided the will truly hates sin and wants to repair it. Conversely, one can weep without penance, if the will does not change. Growing in penance therefore means working first on the will—the decision, renewed every day, to render to God what sin stole from him.

Distinguishing penance from its counterfeits

Three states resemble penance without being it; confusing them leads to spiritual dead ends.

• Remorse is sterile regret over one’s fault, without a confident turning back to God. Saint Paul contrasts “worldly grief,” which “produces death,” with “godly grief,” which “produces a repentance that leads to salvation, bringing no regret” (2 Cor 7:10)^[12]. Judas had remorse; Peter had penance.
• Scrupulosity is the morbid anxiety of a conscience that believes itself always guilty. Endured as a trial, it calls for a guide and gentleness rather than redoubled works; it is not a greater penance. Deliberately cultivated, it becomes false penance, folded back on self instead of looking at God.
• Penitential performance is multiplying harsh works to prove one’s generosity to oneself; it feeds pride instead of breaking it.

True penance, by contrast, looks at God more than at the fault, hopes more than it reproaches itself, and seeks to repair more than to punish.

For the moral virtues, of which penance is one, the Thomist tradition speaks of a just mean between two excesses: vice is found in too much and too little. Let us specify the domain: Thomas himself excepts the theological virtues considered in themselves (I–II, q. 64, a. 4) and recalls that toward God, the inferior “must do all that he can” (III, q. 85, a. 3, reply 2). It is therefore to the measure of penitential practices that the discernment between the two distortions applies here.

The rigorism that despairs

The first distortion hardens penance until it suffocates hope. This is the temptation of rigorism: making God into an implacable accountant, piling up privations like a ransom, believing one has never suffered enough to be forgiven. Historically, the seventeenth century in France gave a famous example: Jansenism, which demanded before any communion a long preparation and extraordinary dispositions—thus Antoine Arnauld, De la fréquente communion (1643)—and whose theses were repeatedly censured by the magisterium. But a penance without love and without trust is no longer Christian: it is slavery. The Curé of Ars, himself a great penitent, tirelessly brought his penitents back to God’s goodness:

“Ah! If we understood his love, if we could see ‘your heart wholly ablaze with goodness, compassion, mercy,’ we would hate, we would weep night and day over our sins!” — Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars^[13]

The most perfect sorrow is thus born of wounded love rather than fear—without imperfect repentance being worthless: born of the consideration of the ugliness of sin or of fear, it too is “a gift of God” that “disposes one to obtain it in the sacrament of Penance” (CCC § 1453^[14]). A penance that despairs has missed its aim: it looked at its fault and forgot the Father.

The false penance that does not convert

The second distortion is the opposite: laxism that takes the name of penance without having its reality. One confesses without changing; one recites the act of contrition without firm purpose; one calls “mercy” the refusal of any conversion. It is the penance of the lips, already denounced by the prophet Joel:

“And now – oracle of the Lord – return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning! Rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love, renouncing punishment.” — Book of Joel 2:12–13^[15]

Rending one’s garments without rending one’s heart: that is false penance. It reassures itself cheaply, believes conversion is done because a gesture was performed, and leaves sin intact under the ashes. According to a saying attributed to Saint Basil, it is not enough to move away from evil:

“For those who do penance, it is not enough, in order to be saved, to turn away from sin; they must also produce worthy fruits of penance.” — A saying attributed to Saint Basil of Caesarea^[16]

Discretion, the mother of virtues

Between these two abysses, tradition places discretion—the right measure. Saint Benedict calls it “the mother of virtues”^[17]: it does not abolish penance; it orders it, adapts it to each person’s strength, and subjects it to obedience rather than caprice. This is why spiritual masters have always advised never to impose extraordinary penances on oneself without counsel. A great mortification undertaken by one’s own will often flatters self-love; a small penance received in obedience breaks it. The golden rule: prefer the penances God sends to those you choose, and submit those you choose to the judgment of a guide. We will return to this.

The threefold remedy

When interior penance seeks expression, Scripture and the Fathers offer it three great paths, which the Catechism summarizes:

“The interior penance of the Christian can take very varied forms. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1434^[18]

These three works are not a menu to pick from, but a threefold remedy that heals the three wounds of sin: pride enclosed in self, forgetfulness of God, indifference toward one’s neighbor. Jesus teaches them together in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6:1–18), warning each time to do them in secret, far from human eyes.

Prayer, penance turned toward God

The first penitential work is prayer, because penance begins with a return to God. To pray, for the sinner, is already to repent: to acknowledge whom one has failed, and to reopen the broken dialogue. The tax collector in the parable holds all praying penance in a single sentence: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13)—and it is he, not the Pharisee, who went down to his house “become a just man”^[19]. Penitential prayer does not need length; it needs truth.

Fasting, penance turned toward oneself

Fasting is bodily penance: by depriving the soul of what is permitted, it trains it to refuse what is forbidden. It is not an athletic feat nor a spiritual diet, but a school of freedom: whoever knows how to forgo bread will better know how to forgo sin. Tradition always unites it to the other two works, because fasting without prayer dries up, and fasting without almsgiving closes in on itself. On the concrete way to fast without rigorism or illusion, see How to Grow in Fasting.

Almsgiving, penance turned toward one’s neighbor

Almsgiving is penance made charity: it repairs greed by giving, and indifference by service. Scripture attributes to it an astonishing power of purification: “Almsgiving delivers from death and purges away every sin” (Tb 12:9)^[20]. It is not that money redeems: it is that the act of giving concretely breaks attachment to goods that was the root of so many faults. On how to practice almsgiving as a true work of conversion, see How to Grow in Almsgiving.

The penances of daily life

Penance is not reduced to these three classic works. The Catechism lists a host of ordinary penances within everyone’s reach, and concludes with the highest:

“Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, the admission of faults to one’s brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1435^[21]

This democratizes penance: no need for a hairshirt or a desert. The annoyance accepted without bitterness, the forgiveness granted, the thankless task done out of love, patience in illness—these are true penances, often purer than chosen mortifications, because one did not choose them.

Asking for the spirit of penance as a grace

The first mistake would be to believe one becomes penitent by sheer willpower. Conversion “is first of all a work of the grace of God,” the Catechism reminds us (§ 1432)^[22]: it is God who brings back the hard and hardened heart. The first means, then, is to ask for the spirit of penance—a heart able to hate sin and to turn back. God never refuses this prayer to anyone who addresses it sincerely.

Living interior penance first

Before looking for penances to do, one must let the heart be converted. Concretely: often meditate, at the foot of the Cross, on the evil that sin has cost. The Curé of Ars made it a habit:

“Let us often meditate at the foot of the cross on the enormity of the sin that made Our Lord die.” — Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars^[23]

This contemplation moves from fear to love: one no longer hates sin because it condemns us, but because it wounded the One who loves us. This is where compunctio cordis is born, the awakened heart. See also, on true sorrow for sin, How to Grow in Contrition.

First accepting the penances God sends

Before choosing one’s own mortifications, the wise penitent welcomes those Providence addresses to him: illness, annoyances, trials, unchosen humiliations. They have a threefold advantage over voluntary penances: they do not flatter self-love, they are tailored exactly to our measure, and they come from God himself. “Taking up one’s cross each day” (CCC § 1435) begins with accepting the real cross, today’s cross, not the one we would have preferred. Many look far away for heroic penances while refusing the penance the present moment offers them.

Having recourse to the sacrament, where penance is brought to completion

The virtue of penance finds its place of fulfillment in the sacrament: there forgiveness is given with certainty, and satisfaction is set. Regular confession, even for venial faults—“devotional confession”—maintains and refines the virtue of penance like nothing else. On how to live it and make it fruitful, see How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Make a Good Confession.

Relying on the Church’s penitential seasons

The penitent is not alone: the whole Church fasts and repents at fixed times, and leaning on them supports perseverance. The Catechism points to “the season of Lent and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord” as “intense moments in the penitential practice of the Church” (§ 1438)^[24]—these are the days and times prescribed by the law of the Latin Church (the CCC refers to the CIC, can. 1249–1253). Alongside them, tradition has bequeathed other rhythms—Ember Days, vigils, Advent—which each may follow freely: these venerable usages free us from the arbitrariness of moods and inscribe penance within lasting fidelity, without attributing to them a universal obligation that the current law does not impose.

Taking up one’s cross each day

The summit of penance is not a work but a configuration: following Christ carrying his cross. “Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance” (CCC § 1435). What distinguishes Christian penance from any merely human asceticism is that it does not aim at self-mastery for its own sake, but at likeness to the Crucified. Penance then becomes less an effort than a love: one accepts suffering with the One who suffered for us.

Advancing under the guidance of a director

Finally, because penance is exposed to the two distortions—rigorism and illusion—it needs discernment. Spiritual direction (which the Catechism rightly lists among the forms of penance, § 1435) guards against excesses: it moderates imprudent zeal, sustains the discouraged, unmasks pride hidden beneath austerity. The principle remains: do not impose notable penances on yourself without counsel, and submit your zeal to obedience, which is better than sacrifices (cf. 1 Sam 15:22)^[25].

Let us first clarify the word: to “do” God’s will is to obey him like a faithful servant; to “live in” the Divine Will is to receive his very Will, that it may live and act in us—infinitely more than obedience. It is in this light that penance here receives its full truth from one thing alone: love. Works, privations, disciplines are worth only by the love that animates them; without it, they are only an expenditure of strength. Jesus says it to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947) with disarming clarity:

“All that I desire is that you love God and that you love your neighbor out of love for God.” — Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, Le Livre du Ciel, volume 2, March 13, 1899^[26]

This word does not abolish penance: it points to its soul. A penance without love remains a chain; a penance out of love becomes freedom. The highest penance, then, is not the harshest, but the most loving: accepting, out of love, what God wants, as he wants it, when he wants it—not by mere resignation of a servant who obeys (the “doing”), but by letting his very Will carry the act (the “living in”). This is penance stripped of all self-love.

Freedom and peace

Penance does not tighten the soul: it frees it. As it grows, the soul is detached from the sin that chained it and tastes that particular peace of the reconciled sinner—not the absence of struggle, but the end of war against God. The Imitation of Christ noted it: “there is no true liberty and solid joy except in the fear of God and a good conscience”^[27], which penance restores.

Joy—for penance is not sadness

Against all expectations, the ripe fruit of penance is joy. Saint Paul said it: “godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation, bringing no regret” (2 Cor 7:10)^[28]. Penitential sadness is a sadness that heals, like the pain of a wound being cleaned; it opens onto the lightness of one who has nothing left to hide. When sadness settles durably and closes in on the fault without looking toward the Savior, it is a sign that penance must be purified and enlightened—without making felt joy a proof demandable at every moment of the sincerity of repentance.

Compassion for sinners

Whoever knows his own misery and has seen it forgiven becomes gentle toward that of others. Penance heals judgment: one can no longer despise a sinner when one knows how much one has been lifted up oneself. That is why the great penitents—an Augustine, a Magdalene, a Curé of Ars—were also the most welcoming toward sinners. Deliberate hardness toward others should alert: it can reveal a penance still unfinished within oneself—without this discernment holding for all legitimate severity, nor for sufferings one endures without having chosen them.

Reparation for others

Penance, once grown, overflows beyond personal salvation: it becomes reparation for the sins of the world. The penitent offers his penances for sinners, the souls in purgatory, the conversion of those who do not convert. This dimension of intercession and reparation has its own development: see How to Grow in Reparation.

Configuration to Christ crucified

The ultimate fruit is likeness. By taking up his cross each day, the penitent ends up bearing, in his flesh and heart, something of his Master’s Passion. Christian penance is not the mutilation of man: it is his transfiguration into a disciple, until one can say with Saint Paul: “what remains to be suffered of Christ’s afflictions in my own flesh, I accomplish for his body which is the Church” (Col 1:24)^[29]. Such is the end: not a diminished man, but a christified man.

No modern figure embodies the balance of penance better than Saint Jean-Marie Vianney (1786–1859), Curé of Ars. His life holds together the two aspects too often set against each other: a heroic austerity toward himself—most frugal food, very brief sleep, harsh mortifications—and a tireless gentleness toward sinners in the confessional, where he spent the better part of his days in times of crowds, receiving throngs of pilgrims^[30]. The secret of this union? He did penance not first for himself but for his parishioners, whom he wanted to save: his own penance was already reparation for others. And he never separated penance from God’s goodness, convinced that “love is worth more than fear”—while recognizing that some love God “in great fear” and “go to heaven” (Pensées, p. 50). He is the exact model for this article: a man whose whole life had come under the rule of conversion, without gloomy rigorism or convenient laxism.

Penance does not grow through occasional great renunciations, but through a small, daily conversion. The means studied can be summarized in a graduated program, from the most accessible to the most demanding:

What matters is not aiming at penance in general, nor dreaming of heroic austerities, but doing today the concrete act that presents itself: that real cross to accept, that disordered desire to refuse, that gaze to lift toward the Crucified. For penance is not a mood but a virtue—a grace one calls upon and exercises. From anyone who asks it with a sincere heart, God never refuses it: he has promised not to despise “a broken and crushed heart” (Ps 50:19)^[31], and he always keeps his word.

• How to Grow in Contrition — the first act of the penitent, sorrow for sin, of which penance is the overarching virtue.
• How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Make a Good Confession — the sacrament in which penance receives forgiveness and sets satisfaction.
• How to Grow in Reparation — repairing the evil done and offering one’s penance for others, the active continuation of the virtue.
• How to Grow in Fasting and How to Grow in Almsgiving — two of the three great penitential works, along with prayer.
• Humility, trust: changing how you look at your sins — how to look at your faults without getting stuck in them, between truth and trust.
• How to Grow in Hope and How to Grow in Trust — the two virtues that keep penance from sliding into despair.