Confession

"If anyone thirst"--and especially if he thirst for purity and love--"let him come to me; let him drink who believes in me."

We know that souls who thirst in this way constantly return with fervor to the sacrament of Penance, a marvelous source of humility, and a means to know their faults better and to repent of them in the supernatural joy of confessing them; in spite of natural repugnance, an occasion to renew wholeheartedly the firm purpose of amendment and especially an occasion to plunge themselves once more, like the prodigal son, into the furnace of mercy. Even if they think that their Communions, their use of the sacramentals, their confident acts of love have already purified them, they will go faithfully to receive, along with the absolution, a purification which is most special because it is sacramental, a new effusion upon them of the Blood of Jesus, their only hope, without forgetting that this recourse is necessary only for serious sins.

--Fr. Jean C.J. d'Elbee, I Believe in Love