Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fearsQuadrupani, Carlo Giuseppe
Religion
Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fears
Quadrupani, Carlo Giuseppe
Christian life -- Catholic authors
*Do not be uneasy because you fail to remember all your failings in order
to tell them in confession. This is unnecessary, because as you often
fall almost without being aware of it, so you often get up again without
perceiving it; just as in the passage you quote it is not said that the
just man sees or feels himself fall seven times a day, but simply that he
falls seven times a day: in like manner he gets up again without noticing
particularly that he has done so. Hence have no anxiety about this, but
frankly and humbly confess whatever you remember, and commit the rest to
the tender mercies of him who puts his hand under those who fall without
malice that they may not be bruised, and raises them up again so gently
and swiftly that they scarcely realize they had fallen.—St. Francis de
Sales.*
17. By a diligent examination of conscience you have thoroughly satisfied
all the requirements for sacramental integrity; therefore banish whatever
doubts and fears may come to beset you, for they are nothing but
temptations.
18. Should you suspect that you failed to fulfil these requirements owing
to not having been particular enough about your examination of
conscience, you may feel sure that your confessor has by prudent
interrogations supplied for whatever may have been wanting on your part.
And if he did not question you further it was due to the fact that he
understood clearly enough the nature of your sins and the state of your
soul, and this is the object of sacramental accusation.
19. How great then is the error of those poor souls who wish continually
to make their general confessions over again, either through fear of
incomplete examination or of insufficient sorrow; and how blameworthy the
weak complaisance of those confessors who offer no opposition to their
doing so! If such fears were to be listened to, every one would be
obliged to pass his entire life in making and repeating general
confessions, for they would incessantly spring up afresh and even the
greatest saints would not be exempt from them. A sacrament of consolation
and love would thus be transformed into a perfect torture for the soul—an
heretical perversion anathematized by the Council of Trent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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