A Reflection on the Scripture Readings from todays Catholic Mass...... Settle On The Way Children, I counsel you, and I admonish and implore you, to learn how to confess all your sins interiorly to God, and to acknowledge yourselves guilty before Him with the utmost sincerity. Ponder over your sins very deliberately before His eyes and with much love; but do not make your outward confession to the priest too long, nor dwell too particularly upon the fine distinction between different venial sins. There is little profit in such a practice, and it robs your father confessor of his valuable time, annoying and perhaps distressing him. Children, by such minuteness of confession your sins will not stop, and, as I have elsewhere taught you, your father confessor has no power over sins which you have not made up your mind to quit. Turn into yourself, arouse your memory, work inside your soul. For the outward telling of your sins brings little fruit if not joined to interior repentance, especially when there is . . . no question of mortal sins, but of venial sins. Such superfluous telling of sins is often the sign of a man all too careless in the work of interior confession. If the interior confession of venial faults be done rightly, these defects are so obliterated from ones conscience that he can scarcely recall or describe them with any particularity; but that presupposes that he has dealt with God about them with deep sincerity. ~ Fr. John Tauler, O.P. Fr. John Tauler, O.P., (+ 1361) was a German Dominican priest, a popular preacher, and a mystical theologian.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:33:08 +0000
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