Private comments on no. 1434 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Introduction: the incarnate logic of conversion
No. 1434 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a realistic synthesis of Christian anthropology: “The interior penance of the Christian can have many different expressions. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms: fasting, prayer and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God and to others.”
The formulation is brief, but it contains an essential truth: for conversion to be authentic, it must embrace the whole human person, who is body and soul. Christianity has never separated the spiritual from the material; therefore, penance, although it is born from interior contrition, demands concrete expression.
Contrary to a purely interior religiosity, the Catholic faith recognises that the human being is sacramental, that is, he communicates and realises spiritual realities through visible signs. Just as Baptism uses water, and the Eucharist bread and wine, interior penance is manifested through bodily and social gestures: fasting, prayer and almsgiving.
This coherence between the interior and the exterior is not mere formalism. It is the recognition that God’s grace transforms the whole person. Penance, therefore, is not a punishment but a pedagogy of love: it educates the heart, purifies intentions and restores the communion broken by sin.
Conversion as a relational movement
The Catechism presents the three classic forms of penance—fasting, prayer and almsgiving—as three dimensions of the same movement of return to God, and each touches a fundamental relationship of human existence.
Fasting is a relationship of self-mastery, the discipline of the body and the passions. It helps the Christian to recall that the true food is to do the will of the Father (Jn 4:34).
Prayer is an intimate relationship with God, which lifts the heart to Him and re-establishes the order of love wounded by sin.
Almsgiving is a relationship of self-gift to one’s neighbour, a concrete expression of charity; it is the visible gesture of a reconciled heart that has learned to see Christ in the poor and the suffering.
These three axes do not arise from an artificial scheme, but reflect Christ’s own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6:1–18). Jesus does not present them as separate rites, but as expressions of an integral interior life that seeks conversion of heart without ostentation.
Thus conversion is always relational: no one converts in isolation. Sin wounds the self, the other and God; therefore penance must heal these three dimensions simultaneously.
The biblical triad—fasting, prayer and almsgiving—is not, therefore, a sum of works, but an itinerary of interior unification. The Christian regains the balance of the soul when he subjects the body, purifies the heart and practises mercy. Penance is the path by which the person relearns to love in an ordered way: God above all things and one’s neighbour as oneself.
Penance as a path of purification and cooperation with grace
The Catechism recalls that Baptism and martyrdom bring about a radical purification, wiping away all sins, but it also recognises the need for secondary means of ongoing conversion. The reason is clear: even regenerated by baptismal grace, the Christian remains vulnerable to the inclinations of sin, to concupiscence.
In this context, penance is not a “second chance” in the human sense, but a cooperation with grace. God forgives freely, but He desires man to take an active part in the process of healing.
Catholic theology has always avoided two extremes: Pelagianism, which reduces salvation to human effort, and Quietism, which expects everything from God without acting. Between these poles, penance is the terrain of balance: man works, but under the impulse of grace.
Penitential gestures are signs of this collaboration. They do not “buy” forgiveness, but manifest and deepen it. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that such works have no value in themselves, but by reason of the charity that animates them (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.147, a.1). Thus the efficacy of penance derives from the interior intention of love, not from the quantity of suffering endured.
In other words, Christian penance is neither legalism nor self-punishment: it is the loving response to a love that forgives.
Charity that covers a multitude of sins
The citation of 1 Peter 4:8—“Charity covers a multitude of sins”—reveals the centre of the theology of penance. When love is true, it unites man once more to God and to his brothers, re-establishing the communion broken by egoism.
Saint Augustine calls charity “the form of all the virtues”: without it, no act has salvific value. Thus fasting without love is a diet; prayer without love is murmuring; almsgiving without love is philanthropy. But when love is present, everything becomes an instrument of grace.
Penance, therefore, is a schooling in love. Sin disorders the heart, making it curve in upon itself (incurvatus in se). Penance straightens it once more towards God and opens it to others.
Charity is the criterion of the authenticity of all penance. The Church has always warned against exterior practices devoid of mercy. As the prophet Isaiah recalls (58:6–7), the fast pleasing to God is the one that “looses the bonds of injustice and shares your bread with the hungry”.
True repentance leads to concrete action, to reparation, to the pursuit of justice and peace. When penance bears the fruits of charity, it fulfils the commandment of love in full.
Saint Augustine: repentance as a return to Love
For Augustine, sin is, above all, a rupture of love. In his philosophical-theological language, it is a turning away from God and a conversio ad creaturas (a disordered turning to creatures). Penance is the inverse movement: conversio ad Deum, a return to true love.
In his sermons, Augustine describes penance as the path of the prodigal son returning to the Father’s house. This return is not only moral, but affective and ontological: man finds again his centre, which is God.
The Bishop of Hippo sees in the three penitential practices—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—three remedies against the three poisons of sin:
Fasting heals the concupiscence of the flesh; prayer heals the pride of life; and almsgiving heals avarice and the closing of the heart.
“Three are the works that set us free from sins: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. What fasting takes from us, almsgiving offers to the other, and prayer offers to God.” (Sermon 207)
For Augustine, these works are not gestures of fear, but responses of love: “Weep for yourselves, not out of punishment, but out of love. The tears of penance quench the fire of hell.” (Sermon 351)
Penance, in this sense, is not a shadow of guilt, but a ray of grace that illumines the repentant heart.
Saint John Chrysostom: penance as the medicine of the soul
John Chrysostom, the “golden mouth” of the East, saw sin as a spiritual illness and penance as the divine medicine. He insisted that God is the physician of souls, and that confession, fasting and almsgiving are the instruments of healing.
“It is not fasting in itself that pleases God, but the humble heart that accompanies it.” (Homily on Penance)
Repentance, for Chrysostom, is not merely sorrow but transformation:
“Do not tell me you have sinned; show me that you have repented. For repentance is not groaning, but changing.”
In his pastoral theology, fasting and almsgiving have a reparative dimension: what sin destroys, charity rebuilds.
“Give to the poor, and your sin is wiped away. Almsgiving is greater than fasting; it is the altar on which one offers mercy itself.”
Chrysostom saw penance as an interior liturgy, in which the human heart becomes altar and sacrifice. God does not will the death of the sinner, but his healing; and this healing comes about when man accepts the bitter remedy of repentance with confidence in the divine Physician.
Saint Gregory the Great: penance as participation in the Passion of Christ
Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church, inherits and synthesises the monastic spirituality of the West. For him, penance is a form of communion with the suffering Christ.
By voluntarily accepting small privations, the Christian unites himself to the redemptive sacrifice of the Cross.
“While we weep for our sins, we wash with tears what pleasure has stained.” (Homily on the Gospels)
Gregory distinguishes Baptism, which is the total and initial purification, from penance, which is the “second baptism of tears”. These tears are not merely a sign of sadness, but of purifying love: whoever weeps for sin shares in the merciful Heart of Christ.
His vision is profoundly Christocentric: every authentic penance is participation in the Paschal mystery—death to sin and resurrection to new life. Hence he writes that penance is “the school where we learn to die with Christ in order to live with Him”.
Saint Basil the Great: the balance between interior and exterior
Basil insisted that bodily fasting has value only when it is united to interior fasting.
“He who fasts but does not put away malice fasts in vain.”
Basil saw penance as a process of integration: the body shares in the conversion of the soul. Fasting thus becomes the symbol and instrument of a heart seeking purity.
He warned monks against the danger of empty exteriority: penance without charity becomes spiritual pride. Balance between the interior and the exterior is the key to his doctrine. The whole person—body, mind and heart—must turn to God, and this unitary vision, inherited from the biblical tradition, resounds in the Catechism: interior penance should be manifested outwardly.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: penance as virtue and sacrament
Saint Thomas Aquinas offers the most systematic theological explanation. In his Summa Theologiae (III, qq.84–90), he distinguishes two dimensions of penance: now as a moral virtue, which inclines a person to detest sin and to repair the evil committed; and now as a sacrament, which confers grace and reconciliation with God through priestly absolution.
For Thomas, the essential act of penance is contrition, that is, sorrow for sin for having offended God, united to the purpose of amendment. This sorrow is not servile but filial: it is born of the love of God more than the fear of punishment.
He explains that penitential works (fasting, prayer, almsgiving) are satisfactory: they do not erase sin of themselves, but repair the temporal disorders caused by it. Thus they have a medicinal function: they restore the order of justice and purify the affections.
Thomas underlines that the value of these works depends on the charity that animates them:
“No satisfaction has merit without charity, for it is love that gives life to all the virtues.” (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.147, a.1)
He also teaches that the body shares in penance because sin was committed through it.
Justice requires that a person offer, by means of the body, something in reparation: “It is fitting that a man should punish himself in that very thing in which he delighted while sinning.” In this way, fasting and mortifications are not arbitrary punishments, but acts of justice and love: the body becomes an accomplice in redemption, just as it was an accomplice in sin.
Saint Teresa of Ávila: the penance that leads to union
With Saint Teresa, the gaze turns to the interior and mystical aspect of penance.
In her works, especially The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, she teaches that the aim of penance is not suffering in itself, but the liberation of the heart to love more fully.
Teresa criticises both laxity and excessive asceticism:
“The Lord does not look at the greatness of the works, but at the love with which they are done.” (Way of Perfection, 40:4)
She recognises the value of fasting and mortification, but warns that they must lead to humility and charity, never to spiritual pride.
“Penance and more penance is good, but only if it comes with love and obedience; otherwise, it is a waste of time.”
For Teresa, penance is the path of purification of the lower mansions of the soul. Fasting disciplines, prayer enlightens, and charity enlarges the heart, preparing it for union with God in the higher mansions.
For her, the greatest suffering is distance from the Beloved; every true penance is born of the ardent desire to find Him again. Thus penance ceases to be a burden and becomes the expression of passionate love for Christ.
The integrated theology of penance: from gesture to mystery
Patristic and scholastic tradition converge in the same line: penance is an itinerary of love that passes through the body, not a useless humiliation.
The Catechism does not speak of “rites of self-punishment”, but of pedagogical gestures of conversion.
The human being, wounded by sin, learns to love again through acts that involve the whole of his nature. Fasting frees him from the tyranny of the senses; prayer reconciles him with God; almsgiving reintegrates him into the communion of his brothers.
These three dimensions—physical, spiritual and social—restore the harmony lost through sin.
Penance is therefore sacramental in the broad sense: a visible sign of an invisible grace.
It belongs to the logic of the Incarnation: just as the Word became flesh to save the whole person, so conversion must also involve the whole person.
Penance and joy: the Christian paradox
One of the most beautiful fruits of penance is spiritual joy. Although it involves tears and sacrifice, it does not lead to despair but to freedom. The saints speak of a “penitential joy”, because whoever acknowledges his sin and hands it over to God experiences mercy.
Saint Teresa of Ávila said that “the sorrow of the world brings death, but the sorrow according to God brings life and peace.” Saint Augustine, after his bitter confessions, could exclaim: “Late have I loved You, Beauty ever ancient, ever new!”—a joy born of penance.
Christian penance, therefore, is not a sterile lament, but a rebirth. It is the process by which the Holy Spirit transforms guilt into gratitude, pain into love, the wound into a source of grace.
Final synthesis: the education of love and the restoration of communion
Throughout the Church’s tradition—from the Fathers to the Doctors, from the Catechism to Saint Teresa’s mysticism—penance is seen as an education in love. Sin disorders the heart, but penance re-orders it by grace.
Fasting teaches self-mastery; prayer teaches trust in God; and almsgiving teaches detachment and fraternal love.
These three practices form a single school: the school of charity.
“Fasting orders the body, prayer lifts the spirit, almsgiving purifies the heart.”
Thus the Christian returns to love as God loves, and that love, as Saint Peter says, “covers a multitude of sins”.
Penance is not, therefore, a burden, but a sacrament of mercy in action.
It educates the soul to live reconciled, purified and united to the One who is Love. By uniting body and soul, gesture and heart, the person becomes a living image of Christ who, on the Cross, offered the perfect sacrifice: visible in His suffering, invisible in His love. And it is in this harmony between the visible and the invisible that the Church continues to teach:
“God forgives freely, but He asks that the human heart move towards Him and towards one’s neighbour.”