My bride and I went to Confession today. As always, I felt after Confession as if a ton of weight had just been taken off my shoulders,
Here is the formula that I have followed for Confessions since childhood:
Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been ____________ since my last Confession and these are my sins.
I then recite my sins. I follow the rule of three B’s in Confession:
Be Blunt
Be Brief
Be Gone
I say my sins, with no attempts to minimize or justify, no matter how it shames me to do so, and sometimes I do feel great shame, which I suspect is a good sign. I end my recital with the statement that these are all the sins I can recall but that I am truly sorry for those I cannot recall.
After the priest absolves me, and what a wonderful word absolve truly is, I say an Act of Contrition:
O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest of all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the Pains of Hell, but most of all because I have offended Thee my God who art all good and deserving of all my love. And I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life, amen.
If any of you who read this have been away from Confession, please go before Christmas. Welcome Christ this year with a clean slate.
We should all go to confession frequently. Ideally, there would be confession before every Mass both during the week and on Sunday. Generally, this is not the case in most Novus Ordo parishes. It should be.
Christ came to help us improve our lives spiritually here on earth and be with Him in heaven after we died. The two biggest helps to accomplish these goals are Confession and Holy Communion. At our Church the extracurricular activities, there are 103, take up far more time than the essentials of Confession and Holy Communion. The Catholic Church needs to evaluate how well it is accomplishing Christ’s mission and get back to the essentials.
Amen!
A good reminder. I was taught in Catholic school that saying an Act of Contrition before reception of Holy Communion is helpful for venial sins.
I wish more churches would have available detailed examination of conscience pamphlets that are specific to adults, teens and younger children.
I took a screen shot of this. Wish I had seen it before Christmas, as I’ve not taken Communion for quite some time (although I attend Liturgy.)
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I found a place to go to Confession, I think, so after the first of the year, I will get to it.
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