Penance! Penance! Penance! — She came to Bernadette | Reject the "Cult of the Body"

In many ways the nineteenth century was to become, after the turmoil of the Revolution, a century of Marian favors. To mention but a single instance, everyone is familiar today with the "miraculous medal." This medal, with its image of "Mary conceived without sin," was revealed to a humble daughter of Saint Vincent de Paul... .

A few years later, from February 11 to July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary was pleased, as a new favor, to manifest herself in the territory of the Pyrenees to a pious and pure child of a poor, hardworking, Christian family. "She came to Bernadette," We once said. "She made her her confidante, her collaboratrix, the instrument of her maternal tenderness and of the merciful power of her Son, to restore the world in Christ through a new and incomparable outpouring of the Redemption."

Op-Ed: "Penance: requested by Heaven and hated by the world" - by Roberto de Mattei

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

January 27, 2016

It there’s one concept that is radically foreign to contemporary mentality it’s that of penance. The term and the notion of penance evoke an idea of suffering we inflict upon ourselves to expiate our faults or those of others, and to unite us to the merits of the Redeeming Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The modern world rejects the concept of penance because it is immersed in hedonism and professes relativism, the negation of any good which is worth sacrificing oneself for, unless it is in search of some pleasure.  Only this can explain episodes such as the present furious media attack against the Franciscans of the Immaculate, whose monasteries are depicted as places of torture, just because an austere penitential life is practiced there. Using the hair-shirt or impressing the monogram of the name of Jesus on one’s chest are considered barbaric, whereas the practice of sadomasochism or indelibly tattooing one’s body are considered an inalienable right of the person.

The Church’s enemies repeat, with all the power the media is capable of, the anticlerical accusations of all times. What is new is the attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities, who, instead of defending the defamed nuns, abandon them - in secret satisfaction - to the persecution of the media. This satisfaction has its origins in the incompatibility that exists between the rules which these religious persist in conforming to and the new standards imposed by “adult Catholicism”.

Septuagesima: In the beginning

The lessons for Matins introduce the theme of the penitential pre-lenten season of Septuagesima: Creation and Fall, and Original Sin; and God's intervention in human History to purify mankind through a remnant in an ark (Sexagesima week) and to choose a People for himself; and the will of the unfathomable Divinity to reveal himself through his chosen people of Israel; and the Mystery of the Incarnation, through which the promise to Abraham ("in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed", First Lesson in the Matins for Quinquagesima Sunday) would be fulfilled by the Divine Son of the Blessed Virgin ("I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel", Third Lesson in the Matins for Wednesday in Septuagesima week).

The reality of Original Sin ("I am the Immaculate Conception") and the great need for penitence in our times ("Penance! Penance! Penance!") were also the messages of the memorable events which began on February 11, 1858: