Once the priest had heard one’s confession, he would then assign penance. For example, he might say that one was obliged to say twenty Hail Marys and forty Our Fathers or to pray the rosary so many times. Our knee-jerk modern view of this tends to be dismissive, as though these assignments were always mere rote exercises. But they were not originally intended as such. To pray the Our Father forty times over a certain period was meant to be done in a thoughtful and focused way, in which the prayer helped one to focus on God. So if the person praying did the prayers in a rote manner—simply
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