If the notion of living repentantly suggests chronic guilt or obsessive self-flagellation it needs to be redeemed and reclaimed. Repentance has a long and troubled history that has led the scrupulous into thickets of confusing and debilitating guilt. But at its best it is a life-giving habit of mind. Both Catholic and Protestant traditions, as well as many other people of faith. recognize recurrent rituals of repentance as “meet and right” for maintaining spiritual health, right-minded humility, and clarity of intention.
I have long loved these unadorned lines in the General Confession from the Book of Common Prayer: “We have erred and strayed in our ways like lost sheep. . . . We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done . . . .” That about covers it, and it seems always to be true. It’s good to specify what those things are in order to stay mindful and truthful about our own habits and avoid comfortable self-deceptions. (A colleague of mine maintained this mindfulness for himself and the rest of us by attaching a tag at the bottom of every e-mail Jeremiah’s unapologetic reminder: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”) That sins of commission and omission are part of daily life is a simple truth that is meant simply to remind us that we are apprentice souls on a learning trajectory that always involves breakage and brokenness and extending and receiving forgiveness. And sheep need a shepherd.
Rituals of repentance, though, however beautifully worded, don’t quite get at the inner experience of repentance, which is, I believe, a prerequisite and preparation for the maturing of gratitude. That we receive gifts each day without deserving them—without even knowing to ask for them–that grace does rain down on the just and the unjust from a God who witnesses our struggles with more mercy than we can muster or imagine–are good facts of life to remember. When we think of it widely, in the context of the story of creation, fall, learning and redemption, a repentant life is one in which we understand more and more deeply how liberally we are blessed, and how wonderful it is that no one is keeping score.
Repentant life is a way of living into grace—stepping back to look at ourselves after each failure, betrayal, misbegotten plan or unjust judgment, recognize the need for course correction, and saying thank you for the opportunity to make that correction and the help available as we do it.
Of course repentance involves sorrow. I am, in fact, truly sorry for having hurt those I have hurt. I want to make amends. Twelve-step programs wisely include serious assessment of the damage one has done and serious consideration of how to make amends as part of their recovery program. Part of the wisdom recovery groups impart is insistence upon repentance and amendment as a step toward liberation. Living repentantly frees us from the troubling past and from morbid self-preoccupation to celebrate the freedom and forgiveness that give us back lives worth living, and worth celebrating with the ease and laughter of those who are free, indeed.
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