In the human sense of justice, "reparation is replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim". This is often quantified in terms of monetary value. So a person who has caused harm to another which is estimated to cost a certain amount to repair, that person would be responsible for giving that person that amount to cover the wrongdoing. There are problems with this as some things cannot easily, or at all, be given a monetary value. What is the proper reparation for the loss of life, physical ability, or time itself? Reparation is imperfect most of the time unless the loss was monetary only. But such is human justice.
In the theological concept of reparation, the same problems infinitely magnified occur. What can man give to God for our sins against Him? What can the human race do to repair the irreparable harm we have done to ourselves through Original Sin? We cannot add to or subtract from God. God is omnipotent and omniscient and without time. God is the beginning and the end. Our beings cannot begin to comprehend God.
This leads to the conclusion that there is nothing man can do to make reparation. Only God could make reparation. This leads to the mystery of the Incarnation and Passion. This profound act of love was able to satisfy the ineffable Will of God concerning Justice. But was it necessary? It is only necessary in the sense that since God willed it, it must be necessary. However, we have no reason to think God was bound to save us. It is only because of God's Love that this was done.
This magnitude of love is beyond our understanding and should be constantly considered.
Consider Genesis 22 where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham was stopped by God who revealed that it was a test and that because of Abraham's act of loving God more than his son, Abraham would be blessed (which we know to have been completed in the birth of Jesus and the founding of the Church for all people). Furthermore, God provided a ram to be sacrificed.
This event has all the characteristics of the mystery we consider here. All that was sacrificed to God was in fact provided by God. Furthermore, God had no need of any of the sacrifices. God only accepted them in light of the person doing the sacrifice and that was only so because God loved that person and wanted good things for that person.
Psalms 50:19
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
This relationship is of a parent to a child. I have seen a child desire to make some work of art for her mother. This child was greatly frustrated by the lack of ability to make what she considered to be a suitable work for her mother. As people who are older, we recognise that the mother would have probably appreciated anything given because the value is not in the objective quality of the art, but of the child's love. Furthermore, the love of the mother for the child is not dependent on the art or the love it reflects. This relationship is very much like the relationship of God to us, but on an infinitely perfect level.
Reparation therefore is not just justice, but love. It is not necessary, but that is what makes it so pleasing. God does not need it. We do.
Consider what St. Paul wrote to the Romans, and to us:
Romans 12:1
I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service.
All sacrifices and reparations to God are part of the Will of God because of God's Love.
The profound act of reparation and the highest sacrifice was God the Son taking on flesh and dying so we may live. This sacrifice was given to us so we may be saved and it is the center of our worship of God through the institution of the Eucharist.
Furthermore, we can make acts of reparation for our own sins and for the sins of others. These acts are allowed by God to satisfy the punishment due for certain sins. This mystery of Divine Justice should not be taken as a completely legalistic phenomenon. It is intensely intertwined with the mystery of the Love of God.
Specifically, reparations should be made:
- For personal sins
- For insults and blasphemies against God, especially particular ones against the Trinity and Jesus
- For insults and blasphemies against the Blessed Virgin Mary, the handmaid of the Lord
Acts of penance and reparation should not be dismissed. It was the penance of the people of Ninive which caused God to spare the city.
Jonas 3
And the word of the Lord came to Jonas the second time, saying: Arise, and go to Ninive the great city: and preach in it the preaching that I bid thee. And Jonas arose, and went to Ninive, according to the word of the Lord: now Ninive was a great city of three days' journey. And Jonas began to enter into the city one day's journey: and he cried, and said: Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed. And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. And the word came to the king of Ninive; and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen nor sheep, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water. And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish? And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.
How much more just is punishment when the people who do evil are knowledgeable about good and evil? How much more efficacious is the penance of those who are mindful of God?
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