3. What Satisfaction Consists In

32. About the third point [n.10] I say that in this understanding satisfaction consists more in penal acts or voluntary sufferings than in other non-penal good acts. Although sometimes satisfaction could be made through some non-penal good act, because God can well accept a great act of charity for the punishment due to a single crime; because though it not be punishment proper, it is yet a greater good and gives honor to God more than does what would be its proper punishment. But, as a matter of rule, just as guilt is put into order by penalty and not by anything else of greater good than the guilt is, so satisfaction said in this way consists in actions or sufferings having the idea of penalty.

33. And this is what [Ps.-]Augustine says, On True and False Penitence ch.15 n.31 (and it is in Lombard’s text, Sent. IV d.16 ch.2 n.6), “There are worthy fruits of the virtues that do not suffice for the penitent; for penitence demands weightier fruits, so that he who is dead may by grief and groans win life.”

34. Now these penal acts or voluntary sufferings are reduced, in genus, to an interior act of displeasure or passion of sadness, and to an exterior act of confessing sin (which is very penal) or to a concomitant passion (namely shame), and to an act or passion simply exterior, namely vexing of flesh (and all such vexing should be contained or reduced to fasting) or raising the mind to God (and this is done through prayer) or expending of one’s temporal goods (which is done by almsgiving).