Advent and Penance

I speak to you in the name of the One, True, and Living God.  Amen.

Does anyone know why the colour of Advent is purple?  - Why does Advent share a colour with Lent?

Advent and Lent are both “penitential” seasons.

So what does it mean to be penitent?

The Latin root for the word means either to regret or to have remorse.

 

I’m sure all of you have pictures in your mind about what it means to be penitent or to do penance.  Some of these pictures will be historically accurate, some will be inspired by movies, and I’m sure some of them are pure folk-lore.

Does anyone know what our church’s current practise is around penance?

I’m going to read a definition of Anglican penance which can be found on Wikipedia.  It is a well written definition.

Confession and absolution, sometimes called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is the rite or sacrament by which one is restored to God when one's relationship with God has been broken by sin. The form is the words of absolution, which may be accompanied by the sign of the cross. Confession and absolution is normally done corporately (the congregation invited to confess their sins, a moment of silent prayer while the congregation does so, a spoken general confession, and the words of absolution). Individuals, however, can and do also participate in aural confession, privately meeting with a priest to confess his or her sins, during which time the priest can provide both counselling, urge reconciliation with parties that have been sinned against, and suggest certain spiritual disciplines (penance). There is no approved ceremony for a private confession of sins, the event being provided for in the Anglican tradition only in uncommon instances where an individual cannot quiet his conscience or find consolation in the General Confession that is part of the liturgy.

Anglican clergy do not typically require acts of penance after receiving absolution; but such acts, if done, are intended to be healing and preventative. The phrase "all may, some should, none must" is often taken as the Anglican attitude towards the sacrament, though there are provinces and parishes where participation in the sacrament is expected for the forgiveness of post-baptismal sin. The priest is bound by the seal of confession. This binds the priest to never speak of what he or she has heard in the confessional to anyone.

So that is our “practice” around penance, but what is it about?

Here is where being Anglican becomes a problem!  There are as many understandings of penance as there are Anglicans.  Our church is bound together by common liturgy (the way we worship) but we have many different ways of understanding why we do what we do.

The best I can do to tell you what penance means is to give you some possible perspectives.

Once tradition, which comes from the very early church, is often called “original sin.”  The basic idea of original sin is that every descendant of Adam shares in his sin of eating the forbidden fruit.  Because of this we are by nature sinful and must constantly try to fix our relationship with God.  Since it was first talked about in the 2^nd century by Irenaeus, theologians have never stopped fighting about this idea.

 

Another tradition views penance as spiritual healing and growth.  In the Eastern Orthodox Church, confession is not made to the priest.  Confession is made directly to Christ.  The penitent confesses not only their sins, but also their good acts and good things that they are thinking of doing.  Confession not only improves the penitent’s relationship with Christ, it also helps the penitent to understand themselves, leading to better spiritual health.

 

Our Lutheran brothers and sisters have a very concise understanding of penance.  It is divided into two parts: confession and faith.  In their understanding, forgiveness has nothing to do with penance.  Penance is something we do to improve our relationship with God.  Forgiveness is a gift that we have already been given by God.

 

So that’s what it means to be penitent.  So I’m done, right?

Oh yes, I said I was going to explain what penitence has to do with Advent.

 

Just a little bit ago, we sang a song which was probably new to you: “Prepare the Way of the Lord.”  That is what we are doing throughout Advent.  We are preparing our lives for the coming of Jesus Christ.  We are making room for him in our hearts and in our actions.

If you think about any of these understandings of penance, they all work to improve or fix our relationship with God. 

As we move through Advent, we are getting ready.  We are making ourselves pure.  We are healing our spirits.  We are doing all of this to prepare the way for Christ to come more fully into our lives.

This is why we are penitent in Advent.  Not to punish ourselves for every wrong we have ever done, but to be healed spiritually so that we are ready to see how blessed we are by God’s many gifts to us.

Thanks be to God.