Vigils Reading

THE CALL TO REPENTANCE

By Pope Paul VI3

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Christ, who during his life always did what he taught, spent forty days and

forty nights in fasting and prayer before beginning his ministry. He began his

public mission with this joyful message: “The kingdom of God is at hand”, and

immediately added this command, “Repent, and believe in the Good News”. In a

certain way, the whole Christian life is summarized in these words.

Repentance is the only way of attaining to the kingdom which Christ

proclaimed, in other words, by the total and intimate change and renewal of the

whole person, in thought, judgment, and life. This change and renewal effects

itself in man through the light of that holiness and love of God which has been

shown and communicated to us wholly in the Son.

The Son’s call to repentance becomes all the more obligatory for us

because he not only preached it but offered himself as an example. Christ is, in

fact, the supreme example for penitents. He chose to suffer, not for his own sins

but for those of others.

When anyone comes into Christ’s presence they are enlightened by a new

light, for they see the holiness of God and the gravity of sin. Through Christ’s

word they receive the message which summons them to conversion and bestows

pardon on sin. They receive these gifts in their fulness through baptism which

molds them in the likeness of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. After

baptism, their whole life is lived in the light of this mystery.

Therefore every Christian must follow their Master in self-renunciation,

in bearing their cross and in sharing Christ’s suffering. Thus, transformed in the

likeness of his death, they are able to meditate on the glory of the resurrection.

They also follow the Master in living no longer for themselves, but for Christ

who loved them and gave himself for them, and for their brothers and sisters as

well, completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body,

that is the Church.

Moreover, [because] the Church [is] intimately bound to Christ, the

penitence of each Christian is also a real and intimate link with the whole

ecclesial community. Indeed, it is not only in the womb of the Church that,

through baptism, they receive the initial gift of repentance, but this gift is

restored and reaffirmed—through the sacrament of penance—for those

members of the body of Christ who have fallen into sin. Those who come to this

sacrament of penance receive there, through God’s mercy, pardon for the wrong

that they have done. At the same time they are reconciled with the Church,

whom their sin has wounded and who, by means of love, example and prayer,

labors for their conversion.

Lastly, in the Church, the little work of penance imposed on each penitent

in the sacrament has a special part in Christ’s infinite expiation; while, within

the order of the Church, the penitent may unite to sacramental satisfaction

everything that they do, suffer and endure. Thus the baptized Christian, at each

moment and in every aspect of their life, bears the sufferings and death of Jesus

in his body and soul.