nature, the eternal punishment which it deserves, the loss of heaven which it entails. A child who has incurred the displeasure of a good parent may be sorry for his fault, without considering the loss or punishment which he has brought upon himself, but simply from the love which he bears his father; or he may be sorry because he feels he has done something dishonourable, or something for which he will have to suffer. In the former case his sorrow corresponds to contrition, in the latter to attrition. avoid the possibility of a mistake, we may say that it is not sufficient for attrition to be afraid of losing heaven or of being condemned to hell, but it must make us repent of past sin and amend our life for the future, as the indispensable means of gaining heaven or escaping hell. Acts of contrition and attrition may be respectively expressed in the following or any similar form of words:"

An Act of Contrition. O my God, because Thou art infinitely good and most worthy of all love, I grieve from my heart for having sinned against Thee, and I purpose, by Thy grace, never more to offend Thee for the time to

come.

An Act of Attrition. O my God, because by my sins I have deserved hell and lost my claim to heaven, I am truly sorry that I have offended Thee, and I firmly resolve, by Thy grace, to avoid sin for the time to come.

2. In their effects. Contrition, joined to the desire of the Sacrament of Penance, remits the guilt of sin before we have actually made our confession or received absolution; attrition disposes us to receive forgiveness when joined with the actual reception of the sacrament. Contrition, being a much higher and more perfect disposition than attrition, prepares us for the reception of a more abundant grace, and for the remission of a larger portion of the temporal punishment due to sin.

CHAP. CXIII. On the Means of obtaining Contrition. CONTRITION being absolutely necessary for the remission of sin, it is of the utmost importance for us to understand

well how to make acts of contrition. The Catechism points out two means by which we may obtain it :

1. We must earnestly beg it of God; and

2. We must make use of such considerations as move us to it.

1. The very nature of contrition, as already explained, shows the necessity of prayer for its attainment; for as the sorrow which is required in the Sacrament of Penance is supernatural, it cannot be obtained without the assistance of grace. Now grace is a free gift of God, and according to His ordinary providence is granted in answer to prayer. Whenever, therefore, we require the grace of contrition, we should have recourse to the Giver of all good gifts by humble and earnest prayer. It is not enough for us to repeat with our lips any set form of prayer, nor to recite the words which express contrition, no matter however perfect; but we must humbly and earnestly beg of God to help us to make the necessary acts. When, however, we have done our best, we may confidently leave ourselves in the hands of the Divine Providence; for He who so lovingly invites sinners to return to Him, will not reject the prayer of those who seek the means of forgiveness and reconciliation with Him. He never commands what is impossible; if, therefore, He commands us to have contrition as often as we approach the tribunal of penance, He will most certainly bestow upon us all that is necessary on His part, if we on our side humbly seek and desire it.

2. The motives enumerated by the Council of Trent as the grounds for contrition are, the malice and deformity of sin, the punishments which it deserves, the loss which it inflicts on us, and the outrage which it offers to the infinite goodness of God, whom we should love above all things. We should consider these motives in the light of faith, and view sin as it appears in the sight of God. He who knows all things, and judges of all things infinitely more correctly than we can possibly do, regards the least venial sin as something far worse in itself, and far more to be avoided, than the greatest calamity which can befall us. He could humble Himself so as to take upon Himself

our miseries; He could allow Himself to suffer every kind of insult and ignominy; He could submit to be crucified between two thieves; but so great is the horror with which He views even the smallest sin, that He could not allow the least stain of guilt to sully the sacred humanity which He assumed for our sakes. Now if God so hates and detests sin, it must surely be something supremely hateful and detestable. He cannot be deceived in the judgment which He forms of its malice. It is therefore most reasonable that we should look upon sin as God does, and hate and detest it as He does.

Again, after considering sin in its own nature, we should pass on to consider it in reference to ourselves, and we shall easily see that it is the most terrible evil that can befall us. There are two ways by which we measure the greatness of any calamity which threatens us, viz. the greatness of the sufferings which it will inflict upon us, and the greatness of the loss which it will cause us. Now whether we consider the eternity of torments of the worst kind which sin deserves, or whether we reflect on the unspeakable and everlasting joys of heaven, of which it deprives us, no other evil can be compared with mortal sin. Hence there is no other evil which we should hate and detest so much as mortal sin. But as the best motive of sorrow for our sins is "the love of God, who is infinitely good in Himself, and infinitely good to us," the most perfect contrition does not look at sin in its opposition to our own good, but in its opposition to the infinite goodness of God. If we love God above all things, as He deserves to be loved, we shall necessarily hate sin, as directly opposed to His sovereign goodness.

The importance of this subject will justify a full explanation of the best means of securing contrition as often as we go to confession. If we exercise ourselves daily in making acts of contrition, we can hardly fail to acquire a facility in eliciting these acts whenever we wish. It is a common saying, that practice makes perfect, and there is scarcely any accomplishment which we cannot master by constant and persevering application. If we practise the same thing over and over again, we shall at

last succeed in doing it well. If we daily strive to make a real act of sorrow and purpose of amendment for the faults which we daily commit,-if we begin to cultivate a spirit of compunction and abiding contrition for our sins,

we may perhaps succeed imperfectly at first; but if we persevere, we shall acquire a habit and facility in making acts of contrition almost without any effort. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of such a habit as this. It will provide us with an antidote against the faults which we constantly commit; it will preserve us in the grace of God; it will dispose us to receive unspeakable treasures of grace as often as we approach the Sacraments; and when death overtakes us, though no priest may be near to pronounce the words of absolution, and to administer to us the consolations of religion, it will obtain for us the forgiveness of our sins, and, by the mercy of God, insure our eternal salvation.

Such, then, is the nature of the contrition which is required in the Sacrament of Penance. Without such a sorrow for sin, confession and absolution are of no avail. We sometimes hear confession spoken of as though it tended to encourage sin, by promising forgiveness on such easy terms. But surely this objection can only be made by persons who are ignorant of the teaching of the Church on this subject. If we believed that confession alone, without repentance or amendment of life, was the only condition on which the forgiveness of sins was held out to us, there might indeed be some truth in the objection; but such a doctrine has always been condemned by the Catholic Church. If any Catholic has been wicked enough to commit sin, because he promised himself that he would afterwards go to confession and obtain forgiveness, he must either have been ignorant of his religion, or he must have been in the most inconceivable state of mind. He must virtually have said to himself, "I will do this because I shall repent of it and be sorry for it as long as I live. I will do it because I shall acknowledge I have acted in opposition to my best interests, and inflicted upon myself an injury which I can never sufficiently deplore. I will do it because I shall afterwards promise never again, for any consideration in the world, to do the same thing.

CHAP. CXIV. On Confession: its Necessity and Qualities. CONFESSION is to accuse ourselves of our sins to a priest, with a view to obtain their forgiveness. Besides being properly ordained, the priest to whom confession is made should be approved for hearing confessions, by the Bishop or Vicar-General of the diocese in which he exercises his ministry. Without this approbation his ministration is not only unlawful but invalid, except in danger of death, when any priest may absolve.

That the confession of sins is a necessary part of the institution of Christ may be easily shown,

1. From our Lord's words to His Apostles: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (St. John xx. 22, 23). In these words our blessed Lord made His Apostles and their successors judges in matters of conscience, with power to acquit or condemn, to forgive or retain sins. But we cannot suppose that this power was to be exercised without any regard to the merits of the case. A judge cannot pass sentence without a competent knowledge of the cause which he is called upon to decide. Now in the case of sin this knowledge can only be had by the free confession of the penitent. In making the Apostles judges in the court of conscience, Jesus Christ has imposed upon sinners the obligation of manifesting their guilt. All, therefore, who would profit by the institution of our Lord and obtain pardon, must humbly acknowledge their sins to those who have received power to forgive them.

2. From the very nature of the obligation of confession. Unless we admit that confession was instituted by our Lord, and practised from the days of the Apostles, we must allow that it is a human institution of later origin, which has been introduced and enforced as an indispensable ordinance of Christ without any one protesting against it, or being able to point out the time or circumstances of its introduction. Such a supposition touching an institution of so practical a kind, and so opposed to human pride, is totally impossible.