All this is very simple, consisting of nothing more than the preaching of the Word of God, the administration of the sacraments, and the performance of acts of worship and prayer, as these are ordinarily practised in the regular routine of the Catholic Church. {118} All that is peculiar and unusual consists in the adaptation of the preaching and instructions to the end in view, and in the daily continuity of the exercises. The object aimed at is to present in one complete view all the principal truths of religion, and all the essential practical rules for living virtuously in conformity with those truths, and to do this in the most comprehensive, forcible, and intelligible manner. The class of persons for whose benefit missions are primarily intended is that portion of the Catholic people least influenced by the ordinary ministrations of the parochial clergy, although all classes, even the best instructed and most regular, share in the benefit. All necessary available means are used to awaken an interest in the mission and to secure attendance. When this is done, continuous daily listening to instruction and participation in religious exercises prevents the impressions received from passing away, the people become more and more interested and absorbed, and are carried through a process of thought and reflection upon all the most momentous truths and doctrines, which is for them equivalent to a thorough education of the mind and conscience. The general instructions given in public are applied to the individual soul by the confessor in the tribunal of penance, as the judge of guilty and the physician of diseased and wounded consciences. Sin and guilt are washed away by sacramental absolution from all who are sincerely penitent; their souls, purified and restored to grace, are refreshed and strengthened by the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, and the debt of temporal punishment due to the justice of God is removed or lightened, in proportion to the intensity of contrition and divine love excited in the soul by its own efforts to secure the grace of God, through the indulgences conceded by the supreme power of the Vicar of Christ. {119}