Devotion of the day: contrition, the step towards forgiveness

How it should be. With your sins you offend God who is an infinitely good Father; offend Jesus who, for your love, shed His Blood to the last drop. So can you think about it, without feeling grief, pain, regret, without detesting your fault, without proposing not to commit it anymore? But God is Supreme Good, sin is supreme evil; the pain has to be proportionate; therefore it must be supreme. Is your pain such? Does it afflict you more than any other evil?

Signs of true contrition. The real signs are not Magdalene's tears, Gonzaga's fainting: desirable but unnecessary things. The horror of sin and the fear of committing it; the pain of having deserved Hell; a secret worry for the loss of God and his grace; the solicitude to find it in Confession; an ardor to use the convenient means to preserve it, and a strong courage to overcome the impediments to remain faithful: these are the signs of a true contrition.

Contrition necessary for Confession. It would be an outrage to Jesus to expose sins to him, without the pain of having committed them; which father would forgive the son who accuses himself, but with indifference, and without the intention of amending himself? Without contrition it is nothing, Confession is a sacrilege. Do you think about it when you confess? Do you wake up the pain in you as much as you can? Do you not worry more for the accuracy of the examination than for the vividness of repentance?

PRACTICE. - Do some act of contrition; stop on those words: I don't want to commit any more in the future.