Confession completes penitence. It is the first instinct of a truly filial heart. No sense of sin, its guilt and shame, has reached its depth, till the wronging such a Father, wounding His heart, grieving His love, is felt to be the blackest feature of it. While the soul stands off from God, conscious of sin, but saying inwardly, "I repent, but I will not confess," the core of sin is there. The poison is in the wound still, and will frustrate the cure. A true penitence for sin against a Being, and God is such, will lead us to that Being, whose forgiveness and the restoration of whose confidence and love are essential to our peace. God seeks to expunge that rancour of the soul, which is the real venom of the wounds of sin, and that passes not out till the penitent, hungry, footsore, tear-stained, travel-worn, falls at his Father's feet and cries, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee; I am not now worthy to be called Thy son. Confession re-establishes the filial relation, which alone gives to penitence its perfect fruit. While that relation is withheld the Father's heart is unsatisfied, the child's spirit is unsoothed, or deceptively so, the heavenly home is closed, and its songs are still. But let the barrier which a sullen heart holds against God be removed, let inward shame, and fear, and sorrow, break forth in David's confession: Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy, and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. To Thee only have I sinned, and done evil before Thee. Then the pardon pronounced over the penitent will be ratified. The Lord has taken away thy sin. This, my son, was dead, and is come to life again; teas lost, and is found. Who now among you will not listen to the Church's invitation, and take advantage of her call to you to come to her confessional? Let not the Sacramental love of Christ be thrown away by any of you.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp