Chapter XXVIII: We Must Not Put Off the Use of This Remedy

CONFESSION being thus the remedy for sin, we ought thankfully and diligently to make use of it; but the devil raises up great difficulties in the way, sometimes deterring sinners from approaching this sacrament of which they stand in the greatest need; sometimes tormenting the good who do approach it with so many scruples as to deprive them of a great part of its benefit.

There are persons who are conscious to themselves that they are living in the state of mortal sin, and who desire to get out of it, and to recover the grace of God, but who are frightened at the idea that it is so very difficult a thing to do. “How shall I examine my conscience,” they say, “when I have committed so many sins? I can never recollect them in the world. I cannot go through with them.”

Now, all these difficulties are purely in the imagination. Set yourself at the work with a simple, childlike intention to go through it well, and all the difficulties will disappear. If you resolve to make a sincere, honest confession, with heartfelt sorrow and a firm determination to quit your sins and live a good life afterwards, all the trouble about Confession will vanish like smoke before the wind.

As to the impossibility of calling your numerous sins to mind, I say a few days of preparation will be sufficient for a confession of a life-time, even though it has been filled with sins. Fervent prayers to God from the heart, with now and then a look at your past life, will bring up, little by little, all that is important to be confessed.

If you are unable to apply your mind, a good will, and a desire to please God, will draw down grace from Him to do all that he requires of you.

Besides, your confessor will give you the benefit of his experience, and make the difficulty very slight. Be humble and sorrowful for sin, and determined to quit it, and your confessor will feel obliged to help you, or rather to cooperate with God in that great work that He is carrying on in your soul. You will be surprised when you have finished your confession to see how very easy it has been, and you will be inclined to say: “How is it possible that my loving Saviour can accomplish such wonderful things for me, when I have done so little myself!”

Do not follow the example of some girls, who go year after year with a guilty conscience, and when asked, “Why have you not been to your confession before?” reply: “I had stayed away so long I was afraid to come”; or, “I felt there was such a load upon me, that I had not the courage to throw it off”; or, “I was afraid the priest would scold me for being so neglectful.” Nonsense! nonsense! the whole of this is nonsense. It is the devil trying to fill your mind full of fancies in order to hinder you from doing a good thing, a pleasant thing, a delightful and easy thing.

You have suffered, perhaps, untold agony of mind, and carried a big burden which you could have thrown off whenever you pleased. The same amount of trouble you have taken a hundred times in your worldly affairs, had it been given to God, would have been sufficient to have relieved you entirely. Jesus Christ would at once have taken all that guilt away from you, had you only applied to Him in the way that He has prescribed.