Quotes on Confession
"I appeal first to you brethren who refuse penance for your acknowledged crimes: you, I say, who are timid after your impudence, who are bashful after your sins, who were not ashamed to sin but now are ashamed to confess. Remember that confession extinguishes hell for you. And you may guess the intensity of hell from what is visible. Some of its chimneys boil away the greatest mountains by its subterranean fires. Etna in Sicily and Vesuvius in the Campania burn with unflagging balls of fire; and they will test us, sear us, devour us in an eternity of judgement, nor will they be finished after any number of ages." (St. Pacian of Barcelona, c. 392 A.D.)
"There is hope of mercy in time and in eternity; but there is confession in time only, and not in eternity. There is no confession of sins in any time except in this present life. By his own will each man is permitted and has throughout life the freedom to choose confession. But when we die we lose life and along with it the right to exercise our will. For then a law already set down unto rest or unto punishment sustains, in accord with its past exercise" (St. Hilary of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church, c. 365 A.D.)
"Just as in the case of those sins which cannot themselves be permanent, because they pass away as soon as they are committed, but their guilt remains, and if not remitted, will remain in eternity, so too with concupiscence; when remitted, guilt is taken away. For not to have sin means not to be guilty of sin. If anyone, for example, committed adultery, even if he never does it again, he is guilty of adultery until it be remitted... He has the sin, therefore, although that which he committed no longer exists because it passed away along with the passing of time at which he committed it." (St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, c. 419 A.D.)
"Can. 901. Any one who has committed mortal sins after baptism, which have not yet been directly forgiven by the keys of the Church, is obliged to confess all such sins which he can remember after a careful examination of his conscience, and explain in confession any circumstances surrounding them which may alter the nature of the sin." (1917 Code of Canon Law)
"Can. 989 After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year." (1983 Code of Canon Law)
"Confession is stronger than an exorcism!" (Fr. Amorth, Chief Exorcist/Rome)
"The Sacrament of Penance is the masterpiece of God's goodness." (Pope Pius XII)
"A man is repaired in an instant by Divine grace." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church)
"One who has confessed and received absolution will be less punished in Purgatory than one who has gone no further than contrition." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church)
"Penance, considered in itself, has the power to bring all defects back to perfection, and even to advance man to a higher state; but this is sometimes hindered on the part of man, whose movement towards God and in detestation of sin is too remiss, just as in Baptism adults receive a greater or a lesser grace, according to the various ways in which they prepare themselves." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church)
"For sins are, so to say, the chains by which the soul is bound, and from which it is freed by the Sacrament of Penance." (Catechism of the Council of Trent)
"Are you scorched, are you burnt to the very core, by the heat of concupiscence? Even so, poor sufferers! You must not lose courage; there is a cool fountain ready to refresh you, and heal all your wounds; not indeed the first font, which gave you the life you have lost; but the second Baptism, the divine Sacrament of Penance, which can restore you to grace and purity!" (Gueranger)
"Can. 959 In the sacrament of penance the faithful who confess their sins to a lawful minister, are sorry for those sins and have a purpose of amendment, receive from God, through the absolution given by that minister, forgiveness of sins they have committed after baptism, and at the same time they are reconciled with the Church, which by sinning they wounded." (1983 Code of Canon Law)
"Sins are pardoned through Penance, as stated above (Q86,A1). But there can be no remission of sins except through the infusion of grace. Wherefore it follows that grace is infused into man through Penance. Now all the gratuitous virtues flow from grace, even as all the powers result from the essence of the soul; as stated in the FS,Q110,A4,r 1. Therefore all the virtues are restored through Penance." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church)
"How thankful, then, should not sinners be to God for having bestowed such ample power on the priests of His Church! Unlike the priests of the Old Law who merely declared the leper cleansed from his leprosy, the power now given to the priests of the New Law is not limited to declaring the sinner absolved from his sins, but, as a minister of God, he truly absolves from sin. This is an effect of which God Himself, the author and source of grace and justice, is the principal cause." (Catechism of the Council of Trent)
"If, when we are seriously ill, the medicines prepared for us by the art and industry of the physician are want to be welcome and agreeable to us, how much more welcome and agreeable should those remedies prove which the wisdom of God has established to heal our souls and restore us to the life of grace, especially since they bring with them, not, indeed, uncertain hope of recovery, like the medicines that are applied to the body, but assured health to such as desire to be cured!" (Catechism of the Council of Trent)
"And believe me when I tell you that afterwards you will feel more happy at having confessed your sins than if you had been made monarch of the whole earth. Recommend yourself to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she will obtain for you strength to overcome all repugnance. And if you lack the courage to disclose your sins at once to the confessor, say to him: 'Father, I need your help. I have committed a certain sin which I cannot bring myself to confess.' The confessor will then adopt an easy means of dragging from its den the wild beast that would devour you. All you will have to do is answer Yes or No to his interrogations. And behold, both this temporal and eternal hell have disappeared, the grace of God is recovered, and peace of conscience reigns supreme." (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church)
