Could you tell me what is the purpose of penance for ourselves and for other people? What is the connection between humility and charity?

Dear Father Angelo,

I am almost 13 years old, I ask you to explain to me what it means to do penance, the value that penance assumes for one’s soul and for the soul of one’s neighbour, why it is so important for making progress in Christian life.

I also wanted to explore the theme of charity and humility, and understand why these two virtues are so important and how to discover their beauty.

Unfortunately, I do not usually practice penance much, because I don’t see it as such a necessary thing, and furthermore I also don’t manage to practice much charity and humility, and perhaps it is exactly because I don’t practice penance that I always fall into selfishness and pride.

I would also like to know how to practice all of this in my daily life and how to commit to it.

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Answer from the priest

Dear Son,

1. By doing penance we intend to give the Lord something that is costly to us.

A gift is valuable when it is costly.

Penance is a sacrifice made out of love.

What matters above all is the love with which it is made, even if it were an insignificant thing.

2. At the same time, penance has great educational value, because it helps one overcome oneself.

It is easy to get carried away by one’s proclivities and also by one’s instincts.

Penance curbs that and makes a person capable of loving.

If loving means giving, no one can give anything except what one possesses.

This is why self-control offered to the Lord can become a great act of love.

3. Our penance and our sacrifices receive great strength if they are joined to the much greater sacrifice that Our Lord made.

Through the bond of charity that joins us simultaneously to God and to our neighbor through these sacrifices, we allow Christ to enter the life of our neighbor, to pour into it the merits of redemption and to lead him to conversion and salvation.

4. St. Pope Paul VI, when he specified the forms of penance, said that the first form of penance consists in faithfulness to one’s duties.

Here is a practical example: setting a time by which our day must be considered concluded, and then we go to bed.

The general trend is to keep going until one gets tired.

In doing so, sleep is sacrificed, and the first hours of the following day are also sacrificed, which are among the most valuable ones.

Instead, setting a time and remaining faithful to it for the love of the Lord is a small thing, a minimal form of penance, but which helps us to overcome ourselves and transform our lives into an act of love for the Lord.

5. Humility and charity are respectively the foundation and the essence of Christian life.

Christian life essentially consists in loving God and in loving one’s neighbour with the heart of Christ, to the point of giving ourselves to God and to others down to the last drop of our blood, as the Lord did.

But that is not possible if our heart is ruled by a disorderly love of ourselves.

Humility intends to bring a remedy to this disorderly love of oneself.

Otherwise, one remains selfish and self-centered.

6. Humility and charity grow together.

The humbler one becomes, the more one becomes capable of loving.

Only to the extent that one overcomes himself and tramples upon one’s selfishness does one become capable of love.

7. For example, try to put into practice what I have told you by promptly obeying to your parents. This too can be an act of humility and charity.

By obeying without resisting, you conquer yourself and please your parents as well as God.

I wish you well, I bless you and I remember you in prayer.

Father Angelo

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