Chapter I

_Confession may be of three kinds_: a general confession of one’s whole life, or a considerable portion of one’s life; the ordinary, or weekly confession; and thirdly the annual or semi-annual review, which is of rule in many religious institutions.

1. _A general confession_ is obligatory if the preceding confessions have been badly made; it is useful at the age when a child has been fully instructed in its religious duties; when a person enters on a permanent state of life, and perhaps once more, when one approaches the portals of eternity. The anxiety entertained by some souls to repeat their general confessions over and over again is most unreasonable; it fosters scrupulosity and is injurious to spiritual progress.

2. _In the ordinary, or weekly, confessions_, which, in the case of religious, rarely include a mortal sin, earnest care must be taken that one or more real sins, recently or formerly committed, be confessed, so that matter be presented for absolution; and also that there be elicited an act of supernatural contrition for those sins, or at least for some one of them. Else the Sacrament would be invalid, for real supernatural contrition is one of its essential parts.

3. _An annual or semi-annual review_ of the weekly confessions affords marked advantages, especially when it is made during the retreat: a. Faults are thus likely to be noticed which attracted little attention at other times. As when a ray of sunshine enters into a rather dark room, and reveals more dust on the furniture than was noticed before, so the Divine light of grace, entering the soul during the Exercises, discovers various defects of which there had been no clear perception. That is a good occasion to obtain pardon for them.

b. When our faults are thus seen together, they are apt to arouse more contrition, and thus secure more entire pardon.

c. Such a review gives us a clearer knowledge of ourselves and shows us what defects we should chiefly labor to correct.