Repentance prayer: what it is and how to do it
Blessed are those who know they are sinners
There is penitential prayer.
More completely: the prayer of those who know they are sinners. That is, of the man who presents himself before God by recognizing his own faults, miseries, defaults.
And all this, not in relation to a legal code, but to the much more demanding code of love.
If prayer is a dialogue of love, penitential prayer belongs to those who recognize that they have committed sin par excellence: non-love.
Of the one who admits to having betrayed love, to have failed in a "mutual pact".
Penitential prayer and the psalms offer illuminating examples in this sense.
Penitential prayer does not concern the relationship between a subject and a sovereign, but an Alliance, that is, a relationship of friendship, a bond of love.
Losing the sense of love also means losing the sense of sin.
And recovering the sense of sin is equivalent to recovering the image of a God who is Love.
In short, only if you understand love and its needs, can you discover your sin.
In reference to love, the prayer of repentance makes me aware that I am a sinner loved by God.
And that I repented to the extent that I am willing to love ("... Do you love me? .." - Jn.21,16).
God is not so interested in nonsense, of various sizes, that I may have committed.
What matters to him is to ascertain whether I am aware of the seriousness of love.
So penitential prayer implies a triple confession:
- I confess that I am a sinner
- I confess that God loves me and forgives me
- I confess that I am "called" to love, that my vocation is love
A wonderful example of prayer of collective repentance is that of Azarìa in the middle of the fire:
"... Don't abandon us to the end
for the sake of your name,
do not break Your covenant,
do not withdraw Your mercy from us ... "(Daniel 3,26: 45-XNUMX).
God is invited to take into consideration, to give us forgiveness, not our previous merits, but only the inexhaustible riches of His mercy, "... for the sake of His name ...".
God does not mind our good name, our titles or the place we occupy.
It only takes into account His love.
When we present ourselves in front of him truly repentant, our certainties collapse one by one, we lose everything, but we are left with the most precious thing: "... to be welcomed with a contrite heart and with a humiliated spirit ...".
We saved the heart; everything can start again.
Like the prodigal son, we deluded ourselves to fill it with acorns fought over by swine (Luke 15,16:XNUMX).
Finally we realized that we can only fill it with you.
We chased the mirages. Now, after having swallowed disappointments repeatedly, we want to take the right path not to die of thirst:
"... Now we follow you with all our heart, ... we seek Your face ..."
When everything is lost, the heart remains.
And the conversion begins.
A very simple example of penitential prayer is that offered by the tax collector (Luke 18,9: 14-XNUMX), who makes the simple gesture of beating his chest (which is not always easy when the target is our chest and not that of others) and uses simple words ("... O God, have mercy on me a sinner ...").
The Pharisee brought the list of his merits, his virtuous performances before God and makes a solemn speech (a solemnity that, as often happens, borders on the ridiculous).
The tax collector does not even need to present a list of his sins.
He merely recognizes himself as a sinner.
He dares not raise his eyes to heaven, but invites God to bend down over him (".. Have mercy on me .." can be translated as "Bend over me").
The Pharisee's prayer contains an expression that has the incredible: "... O God, thank you that they are not like other men ...".
He, the Pharisee, will never be capable of a penitential prayer (at best, in prayer, he confesses the sins of others, the object of his contempt: thieves, unjust, adulterers).
The prayer of repentance is possible when one humbly admits that he is like the others, that is, a sinner in need of forgiveness and willing to forgive.
One cannot come to discover the beauty of the communion of saints if one does not go through communion with sinners.
The Pharisee bears his "exclusive" merits before God. The tax collector bears "common" sins (his own, but also those of the Pharisee, but without needing to accuse him).
"My" sin is everyone's sin (or one that hurts everyone).
And the sin of others calls me into question at the level of co-responsibility.
When I say: "... O God, have mercy on me a sinner ...", I implicitly mean "... Forgive our sins ...".
Canticle of an old man
Blessed are those who look at me with sympathy
Blessed are those who understand my weary walking
Blessed are those who warmly shake my trembling hands
Blessed are those who are interested in my distant youth
Blessed are those who never tire of listening to my speeches, already repeated many times
Blessed are those who understand my need for affection
Blessed are those who give me fragments of their time
Blessed are those who remember my solitude
Blessed are those who are close to me at the moment of passage
When I enter into endless life I will remember them to the Lord Jesus!