Penance II

The Sacrament of Penance is a Sacrament which our Lord Jesus Christ instituted for the forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism. There is no sin which this sacrament does not remit, no matter how grave or how numerous. Every sinner is sure of forgiveness and being made one again with God provided that he makes the necessary reparation. We must know our sins, the number of them, and the circumstances which cause us to sin. We have to pray to the Holy Ghost in order to attain this knowledge. If we examine our conscience without praying for enlightenment from the Holy Ghost we run the risk of making a sacrilegious confession!

The Council of Trent teaches us that the complete confession of sins was also instituted by the Lord and is by divine law necessary for all who have fallen after Baptism…For it is clear that without knowledge of the case priests could not exercise this judgment, nor could they observe equity in the imposition of penances if the penitents declared their sins only in general not specifically and in particular.

Thus it follows that all mortal sins, of which penitents after a diligent self-examination are conscious, must be recounted by them in confession, though they may be most secret and may have been committed only against the last two precepts of the Decalogue; for these sins sometimes wound souls more grievously and are more dangerous than those which are committed openly…when Christ’s faithful strive to confess all sins that occur to their memory, they undoubtedly place all of them before the divine mercy for pardon. But those who fail to do so and knowingly withhold some, place nothing before the divine goodness for remission.

In Christ,

Rev. Jeffery A. Fasching