Crime and Punishment

Seeing how our penances correspond to our sins

12/23/2021

Lk 1:57-66 When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be? For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”

One of the best books I have ever read – after the Bible, of course – was in high school and it was called “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist. That book taught me that the punishment always “fits” the crime, like a hand in a glove. There is an intimate correlation between crime and its punishment, like between a cause and its effect: one inexorably follows the other. I often wondered: what heinous crime did I commit to be punished with reading this long book with unpronounceable Russians names?

At Catholic High School I not only read about crime and punishment, I witnessed it in how our principal disciplined us boys. One day a student was having fun slamming doors. When he entered a room, he would slam the door. When he exited a room, he slammed the door. The teachers could not get him to stop, so they sent him to the principal’s office. Fr. Tribou read him his sentence: “So, you like doors? Your punishment is to take one of the doors off the hinges and carry it with you everywhere you go for a week.” That poor kid lugged that big door under his arm to the cafeteria, to the gym, to his classes, and even to the chapel for Mass. He never slammed a door again. Crime and punishment.

In the gospel today, God also follows this “inner logic” of crime and punishment in the case of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. What was Zechariah’s crime? Well, he did not slam classroom doors, but he did “slam the door shut” in the face of the archangel Gabriel when the heavenly messenger announced the birth of John. That is, Zechariah used his speech poorly, to doubt God and his plan.

What was Zechariah’s punishment, therefore? He lost his precious gift of speech, and was struck dumb, unable to talk. Today his speech is restored because he accepts God’s will and declares that his son’s name will be “John” (a great name!). In other words, there is an inner logic, an intimate connection, between a crime and its punishment. They fit together like a hand in a glove, or follow infallibly like the day follows the dawn. You cannot stop them.

Did you know that every time we go to confession, we too experience a moment of crime and punishment? That is, our sins are the crimes we commit against God, against others, against creation, and even against ourselves. And the “penance” the priest assigns you is the “temporal punishment” for those sins. I have always wished someone would confess the sin of slamming doors so I could give them the penance of carrying a door everywhere for a week. But I am still waiting.

The penance I always give, however, is “one Our Father.” Why? Well, because I know for sure they will complete that penance before they receive Holy Communion next time. How so? Well, the next time they go to Mass, they will pray the Our Father before going up for Holy Communion, and complete their penance. Even if they forget their penance, they will still complete their one Our Father before receiving Communion. That is my own interpretation of the inner logic of “crime and punishment,” one follows the other like a headache follows heavy drinking, whether you remember your penance or not.

But I also feel I am doing a disservice to all those who go to confession to me because their real penance is waiting for them in purgatory. In the end, purgatory is only the necessary punishment for the crimes and sins we commit in this life. And the punishment will correspond exactly to the crime. If we slammed doors on earth, we will carry doors in purgatory, until we no longer desire to slam doors. If you want to avoid purgatory, the solution is simple: confess your sins and do your penance now. And if you cannot think of a good penance, perhaps you should read Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!