A Penitent: from a negative to a positive

I had a conversation with a friend who viewed a website for a new charism by Cloister Outreach. I honestly cannot remember which prospective community it was, but I do remember her asking me in disbelief, "It actually says it is for 'PENITENTS'!" That is when it occurred to me that there is a wealth of misconceptions about that term. It has a negative connotation, which it doesn't deserve. Being a penitent is no worse, nor much different, from being a convert. A penitent is someone who has repented from his lifestyle and/or beliefs away from God and changes his life's path to one in the direction of the Holy One.

One doesn't have to be a gambling or drug addict who converts. Nor are all women who are penitents former prostitutes. This group of people have no doubt the need for conversion, but that is something that happens (or not) in Gods way and as a product of the person's free will. Moreover, those who seek to assist and convert people who are deep into the world of drugs or the illegal/immoral sex trade, just cannot approach it the way the Good Shepherds did after the French Revolution or even as they did in the stories I heard while in formation as a Good Shepherd Companion. As recently as the early to mid 20th Century, the sisters would actually walk into a bar and retrieve the wayward ward in their charge, and the patrons of the pub would applaud. Any intervention like that today could and probably would end the good sister in the hospital or morgue.

There is also the historical "mis notion" that St. Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. No where in the Bible does it say that she engaged in the world's oldest profession. In Christ's time, a woman who was lacking in rank was one who had no man to support her. Remember, women had no legal means of supporting themselves. That happens to be an issue for women in our culture up through the 19th Century and still exists in some cultures today, particularly in the Middle East. If you had relations with a man back then, while it was probably as rampant as it has always been, and were caught, then you could be stoned. We do know that Mary of Magdala was a woman of the world, who found the Love in Jesus Christ that was lacking in her life. This latter fact is something that is experienced by many, many people in the world today. A penitent woman today doesn't need to be engaged in prostitution to have that descriptive title any more than the venerable Magdalen.

We are living in what Pope John Paul II the Great called "a culture of death". This is more than contemporary society's view of abortion, euthanasia or the death penalty. It is the direction of people's lives away from God, period. People who search for the meaning of life are turning to new age, pagan belief systems. Some have no moral compass at all, rejecting what may have been taught them as a young child, due to parental figures seen as hypocrites or by the influence of their peers, in search of that perfectly perfect "good time". Since we have taken away the stigma of being a single mother (a good thing, because it is pro-life), we seem to have also given young adults the idea that it is a lifestyle choice. While watching a TV documentary about the rising number of single parent families and young people choosing to live together as a family without the benefit of marriage, the majority of the females interviewed believed that it wasn't necessary to have a father in the home. The various methods of birth control offered (and I feel pushed upon) young women today not only adds to this misguided idea, but also makes having sex simply a form of recreation that is every humans "right". The Sacrament of Marriage is way outside of their radar. But if just one of these young people decide to purge their worldly lifestyle and follow Him, they are a penitent. That is a good thing.

Moreover, adding to the group are people who are divorced, engaged in a nonsacramental union, single and not living a life of chastity as God prefers and an entire host of people who are ignoring God in their lives. Any one of these people, good people, who choose the path of righteousness and to imitate Christ will be a penitent.

I became a Catholic at the age of 20. I had a good time in college back in the 70's and it involved a lot of partying. I wasn't a bad person, but I wasn't living His will. I married because I felt it was what an "aging spinster" like myself had to do and that was a mistake. It was the annulment process that opened my heart to conversion. I liken myself to the Magdalen, as she went to the tomb of Jesus on the day of the Resurrection. I sought the Living among the dead in the way I lived my life and even in my first attempts at discerning a vocation. But, as I heard in a homily one day, all I had to do was turn around. Jesus was there all the time. I had to recognize him and declare, "Rabboni"! I am now officially a penitent. And, not only is it a good thing, I am proud of it.