Penitential Rite

Mass practically begins with a “penitential act.” It’s the first order of business, right after the Sign of the Cross and a basic greeting. It says, “first things first”—let’s acknowledge our sins. We should not discount that immediacy. The Penitential Act signals an indispensable element of right worship and liturgy: man’s moral standing before his God. God is holy; man is not. That dissonance is the barrier to right worship because it is the barrier to the divine-human relationship.

That said, exactly what is the sense and purpose of the penitential act? It is not a quasi-sacrament of Penance. Persons in mortal sin need recourse to the sacrament of Reconciliation to be put right with God; the Penitential Act is not the place for that. Instead, it is a recollection that we are sinners and that sin impedes our relationship to God.

Yes, persons contrite about venial sin can secure forgiveness through various acts, including devout reception of the Eucharist with detestation of sin. But there is a qualitative, not a quantitative difference between mortal and venial sins: mortal sins are not “grown-up” venial sins. Venial sins represent an inhibition of divine grace, which can be forgiven if one is in a state of grace, for example, through Mass, prayer, or devout reception of the Eucharist. Mortal sin is the absence or rejection of God’s grace and can only be pardoned by recourse to Baptism or, subsequently, sacramental Penance.

The priest’s prayer concluding the Penitential Act is not declaratory but imprecatory, whereas Catholic teaching states that a valid act of absolution requires a declaration of binding or loosing, not just a prayer seeking it. Christ, after all, entrusted the ministry of the keys to his human ministers—persons, not to the ministry of praying for God to do it.

These observations—and how they interplay with mortal and venial sin—seem particularly apt in our times for two reasons. First, the phenomenon of frequent Communion but infrequent Confession, which raises the question of spiritual dullness to a sense of sin and complacency in its presence. Second, the relative lack of addressing that topic in the liturgy (e.g., St. Paul’s admonition against unworthy reception of the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:27-28) appears relegated by the Lectionary to a weekday in Ordinary Time.

That is not to say that the Penitential Act is redundant. It is not. It is only to say it is not a sacramental encounter intended to deal with one’s spiritual state of mortal sin. It is a constant opportunity to “call to mind” the fact of human sinfulness, that is, to reacquire what for humans is always an eroding sense of sin, in order to seek God’s forgiveness.