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By Jenna Marie Cooper, OSV News
Q: Recently I went to confession on Saturday afternoon before my parish’s vigil Mass. The priest told me to say a rosary for my penance. But since I was the last one in line, Mass was starting right away and I didn’t have time to say my penance. Then I’m embarrassed to admit I wound up forgetting about it, and I didn’t actually say the rosary like I was supposed to until a few days later. Now it occurs to me that since I didn’t say my penance right away, my confession was invalid and I shouldn’t have received Communion at Mass. Is this a new sin I need to confess?
A: The short answer is no, you didn’t do anything wrong by receiving holy Communion before completing your penance.
First of all, keep in mind that it’s only mortal sins (serious sins we commit with full knowledge and freedom) that should prevent a Catholic from receiving holy Communion. As you know, if a Catholic receives Communion with an unconfessed mortal sin on their conscience, they have thereby committed the additional grave sin of sacrilege. Sometimes as shorthand, we call this “receiving Communion unworthily.”
Of course, for the sake of a healthy spiritual life it’s good to approach the sacrament of reconciliation regularly even if just to confess more minor venial sins. Yet the Church does not strictly require us to confess merely venial sins before receiving Communion – and in fact, a devout reception of holy Communion by itself can forgive our venial sins (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1394).
But even if we suppose for the sake of argument that you had confessed a mortal sin, it still would have been fine to receive holy Communion. Sacramental forgiveness of sins takes place as soon as the priest prays the words of absolution, and the validity of the sacrament is not dependent on the penitent completing his or her assigned penance.
Though this is not to say that doing our penance after confession is optional! Canon 981 of the Code of Canon Law, after explaining the confessor’s obligation to impose penances that are proportionate to the severity of the sins confessed and truly appropriate for the penitent’s life circumstances, goes on to state: “The penitent is bound personally to fulfil these penances.” Yet even here, the law does not propose the completion of penances as a condition of absolution “working.”
Canon 981 also doesn’t mention a timeframe in which penances are to be completed. Practically speaking, it makes sense to try to complete a penance as soon as reasonably possible, but a straightforward reading of the law would suggest you could legitimately complete a penance even days later.
If the completion of one’s penance is not necessary for the sacrament to be effective, then why have penances in the first place? As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The confessor proposes the performance of certain acts of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘penance’ to be performed by the penitent in order to repair the harm caused by sin and to re-establish habits befitting a disciple of Christ” (CCC 1494)
Or in other words, penances are given in order to further our own spiritual growth, and possibly also to ease the negative effects our sins have caused.
The one theoretical situation I can think of where a failure to complete an assigned penance might impact the validity of a Catholic’s sacramental confession is a scenario where a refusal to do penance was one aspect of a broader lack of true contrition, or the penitent not actually regretting the sins they have confessed. As the Code of Canon Law also tells us, valid absolution can only be received by those who “are sorry for those sins and have a purpose of amendment,” with “firm purpose of amendment” meaning a real intention to turn away from sin and grow in holiness (See Canon 959).
Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.
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