Expert: Griff Ruby - 12/14/2005

Question
Please explain penance and why it is so important to the catholic faith

Thank you for your time. I have been reading Catholism for dummies, but I think I need more.
Kitty Rutledge

Answer
Since I can't tell whether you refer to the sacrament of Penance or penances that we accept or even take upon ourselves, I will have to speak of both.
1.  The Sacrament of Penance (confession)
While it is true that we confess our sins to God, who saw every sin you would do since long before you even existed, we are also instructed to confess our sins to our priest as well.  Why is this so?  It serves to further remind us and teach us the horror of sin.  It's bad enough having to tell God who at least already knows of our sin in all our detail, but having to tell a man (a priest) is actually much harder.  However, he can give us that necessary feedback we need that God may not whisper in our ear (since such revelations are generally quite rare), and tell us where we stand, what exactly was sinful, and even if something we felt bad about might not be sinful at all, or at least either or more or less sinful than we thought.  The priest can counsel us and guide us into avoiding the sin in the future, since the goal is not merely that the sin is forgiven, but that it does not occur again.
Another reason is that it works a bit like baptism, another sacrament.  It is not enough merely to make some internal committment to God, or even public profession of faith, but also to formally join His Church through the sacrament of baptism, or like marriage where it is not enough that the two people decide to start a family together, but rather the rights and responsibilities and capabilities for running a family and married life are officially conferred in the wedding.  So likewise, the absolution of sin formally takes place in the confessional.
2.  Penance as penitential acts.
There are several occasions for penance, one being imposed in the confessional (where the priest says, "...and for your penance say 10 Hail Mary's and make a good Act of Contrition"), another as a Lenten (and various other seasonal) event, and finally voluntarily at any other time, under the guidance of one's spiritual director of course, as for example those saints who fast all the time or wear hair shirts and so forth.
The first object of such penance is to share in some small way in the sufferings of Christ.  Through this we gain a small glimpse of what it cost Him to pay for our sins, for otherwise what He did would be rather abstract to us and seem valueless or "easy."  Paying for sin is not easy but the costliest gift God gave us.  Next to that creating the whole universe and we ourselves was practictally trivial for God.  It is not that our sufferings can add anything to His, or as if there were any deficiency to His sufferings or their value, but that we have an opportunity to show ourselves and God the seriousness of our repentance.  If you wrong someone and are sorry for that you would quite naturally want to make it up to him somehow, and indeed that they give you something you can do to make it up shows that forgiveness has been given and you are still on speaking terms with that person.  Finally, it allows for justice, that even those who have sinned and repented and who will end up in the same Heaven nevertheless have a chance for paying what they owe that others less sinful do not owe.  Where this last does not get evened out in this life it gets evened out in Purgatory in the next.