On Frequent Confession

First Point - If you do not sin, it is needless for you to confess; but if you sin frequently, you should confess frequently. Why do you defer your confession? The longer you defer it, the more difficult it will be to make it. Your sins will only increase, and your memory of them will be less accurate. But if you forget them through your own fault, do you believe that God forgets them? Do you imagine that a forgetfulness which you could have avoided but would not, and which can justly be considered willful forgetfulness, will excuse you before God? If that were true, your negligence would indeed render your confession less difficult.

Second Point - Is it because you are waiting until you are in the proper disposition, that you confess so rarely? Can you learn to do an action well by performing it seldom? Can you acquire the habit of penance by practising it only once a year? Can you hope to be cured of your malady by constantly deferring the remedy, and by applying it when the malady is well-nigh incurable? Do you imagine that your delay will diminish your difficulties? Is it not obvious that they only increase? By deferring your confession, your sins take firmer root, your habits grow stronger and your will becomes weakened. Does not experience teach you that the best means for living in great purity of conscience is to employ frequently a remedy which will strengthen and fortify you?

Third Point - When you feel the weight of a mortal sin on your conscience, do you hasten to be relieved of it as soon as possible? By living continually in sin you grow familiar with it and nothing is more dangerous. Moreover, sin, by causing the death of your soul, makes it impossible for you to obtain the merit of good works; for however good they appear, they merit you nothing for eternal life. What a loss! How great a misfortune it is not to realize this loss and to neglect to take the means to prevent it.

Take the resolution not to remain long in mortal sin and to disburden yourself of it as soon as possible by a good confession.

Give glory before death. Praise perisheth from the dead as nothing. - Sirach 17:26

You fear to confess, and yet you cannot hide your sin by not confessing it. You can be delivered from it if you confess it; whereas you will be damned if you do not confess it. - Saint Augustine of Hippo

- text taken from Meditations for Every Day in a Month, by Father François Nepveu