Part two (4): Act of Oblation

Xiii. Act of Oblation

0 Jesus, I offer Thee the rest I am about to take, in honor of the eternal rest Thou dost enjoy in the bosom of Thy Father, and in honor of the sleep and temporal rest Thou didst take in the bosom of Thy Mother, as well as during Thy whole life on earth.

I offer Thee every breath I shall draw during this night, every pulse

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of my heart and my veins, desiring that they may be so many acts of praise and adoration of Thee. I unite myself with all the praises which will be offered up to Thee, this night and forever, in heaven and on earth. I beg all Thy angels and saints, Thy Blessed Mother and Thy very Self to love and glorify Thee for me this night and for all eternity.

When you have said this and are lying down, you should make the sign of the Cross. Then say the last prayer that Jesus said to His Father at the last moment of His life: Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum. 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23, 46). You should say this prayer with your life's last hour in view, and try to say it with just as much devotion as you would wish if you were indeed in that last hour. To do this, you must desire to make the offering, as far as possible, with the love, the humility, the confidence and all the divine and holy dispositions with which Jesus said these words Himself. At the same time unite yourself, as of that moment, with the final disposition in which Jesus ended His life, saying this prayer and imploring Him to impress those dispositions deeply within you and to keep them there for you in your last hour, so that, by this means, you may die in Christ, that is, i n the holy and divine dispositions in which He died, and thus you may be one of those of whom it is written: Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord" (Apoc. 14, 13).

Finally, take care that your last action before falling asleep is the sign of the Cross; and that your last thought is of Jesus, that your last inward act is an act of love for Jesus and Mary. Thus you may merit the grace that the last words you say in your life will be these: Jesus! Maria! Live Jesus and Mary! 0 Good Jesus, be Jesus to me! 0 Mary, Mother of Jesus, be the Mother of my soul!

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Confession

Xiv. Preparation for Confession

The frequent use of the Sacrament of Penance is a very useful, holy and necessary means for the glory of God and the sanctification of souls.

But it is a deplorable thing to see what a strange abuse many souls make of this Sacrament in our own day, when they come to, the feet of the priest to receive absolution for their sins, but get up and bear away their own condemnation because they have come without the dispositions necessary for true and solid repentance. This is a matter to be feared extremely, even by those who confess frequently, because there isa real danger of their going to confession more as a matter of routine than in a real spirit of penance, especially when they can detect no change in their life and no progress in Christian virtues. Therefore, the more you frequent this Sacrament, the more you should see that you make the proper preparation for receiving it. There are three things that will enable you to do, so.

1. You must fall on your knees before Our Lord, in some quiet place, if possible, to consider Him and adore Him in the rigorous penances, in the contrition and humiliation which He had to bear for your sins all through His life, especially in the Garden of Olives. And you should beg Him with great insistence to let you share in His spirit of penance, and to give you the grace to know your sins, to hate and detest them as much as He would wish, to confess them clearly, and to give them up absolutely and to be converted perfectly to Him, flying from all occasions of sin, while making use of the remedies necessary for the healing of the wounds of your soul.

To do this, you may use the following prayer:

0 my dear Jesus, as I contemplate Thee in the Garden of Olives when Thou didst enter upon Thy Sacred Passion, I behold Thee prostrate upon the ground before Thy Father's face in the name of all sinners, since Thou hast taken upon Thyself all the sins of the

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world and, especially, my own. I see that by Thy divine light Thou dost place all those sins before Thy own gaze, to confess them to Thy Father in the name of all sinners, taking upon Thyself all the humiliation and contrition for them in His sight, and offering Thyself to Him to make whatever satisfaction and perform whatever penance is pleasing to Him.

0 my Good Jesus, I behold Thee, as a result of this spectacle of the horror of my crimes and of the dishonor they give to Thy Father, reduced to an astounding agony, a frightful sorrow and to such an extremity of anguish and contrition, that the violence of the suffering makes Thy soul sorrowful unto death and causes Thee even to sweat blood, so terribly as to stain the ground about Thee.

0 my Saviour, I adore, love and glorify Thee in Thy holy agony and in this spirit of penance to which Thou hast been reduced by Thy love and my offenses. I give myself to Thee now, that I may enter with Thee into this spirit. May it please Thee to give me some little share of the light that gave Thee cognizance Of m y faults, that I may know them and confess them humbly. Give me some small share of the humiliation and contrition Thou didst bear before the Eternal Father, as well as some measure of the love with which Thou didst offer Thyself to Him in atonement and some fraction of Thy hatred and horror for sin. Give me the grace, I beseech Thee, to make this confession with perfect humility, sincerity and repentance and with a firm and strong resolution never to offend Thee again.

0 Mother of Jesus, I implore thee to obtain for me those graces from thy Son.

0 my holy guardian Angel, pray to Our Lord for me, to give me the grace to know my sins and confess them well, and to have true contrition for them and to be perfectly converted from them.

2. When you have said this prayer, you should examine your conscience with care and try to remember the sins you have committed since your last confession. Once you have recognized them, try to form in your heart real regret, perfect repentance and contrition for having offended so good a God, asking Him pardon for your faults, detesting them and renouncing them because they displease Him. making afirm resolution to avoid them in the future, with the

help of His grace, flying from all occasions of sin, and making use of the proper and efficacious means to bring about a genuine conversion: for contrition is composed of all these elements.

Since, however, contrition is extremely necessary and important, not only in confession but i n several other matters as well, I should like to show you in more detail the nature of contrition, and when and how you ought to make acts of contrition. This will be done after I have told you the third thing necessary for a perfect confession and what to do after you have confessed.

3. The third thing you must do, if you want to make a perfect confession, is to kneel before the priest as before one who represents the Person of Jesus Christ and takes His place. Present yourself to him as a criminal who has outraged the majesty of God, with the full intention of humiliating and confounding yourself, taking God's side against yourself, as against His enemy which you are in so far as you are a sinner, and being ready to arm yourself with His zeal for justice against sin and His infinite hatred for i t . Do, not fail to bring with you the firm resolve to confess your sins humbly, completely and clearly, without disguises, without excuses, and without trying to shift the blame on to somebody else. But rather accuse yourself as though you were on the point of death. For it would be well to reflect that it is far better to state your sins in the ear of the priest than to bear the shame of them on ~he day of judgment, before the entire world, and then be damned forever.

Remember that you ought to be willing to accept with cheerfulness and courage the pain and confusion that go with the confession of sins, out of homage for the confusion and torments suffered by our Lord Jesus Christ upon the Cross for those very same sins, as well as to glorify Our Lord by your humiliations, remembering that the more you abase yourself, the more He is exalted in you.

Xv. Thanksgiving After Confession

After you have confessed your sins and received pardon for them through the Sacrament of Penance, do not forget to thank Our Lord for having given you so great a grace. When He delivers you from some great sin, either by preventing you from failing into it, or by

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pardoning you after your fall, even if it is only the smallest venial sin in the world, He is giving you a greater grace, for which You Owe Him more thanks, than if He had preserved you from all the plagues, diseases and other afflictions of the body that might beset you. Therefore, thank Him in such words as these, praying Him to preserve you from sin in the future.

Be Thou blessed, O Good Jesus, be Thou blessed a thousand times! May all Thy angels and Thy saints and Thy holy Mother bless Thee now and forever, for having established in Thy Church the holy Sacrament of Penance and for having given us so accessible, so easy and so efficacious a means of wiping out our sins and becoming reconciled with Thee! Be Thou blessed for all the glory that has been and will be given Thee by this sacrament until the end of the world! Blessed be Thou, also, for all the glory Thou hast Thyself rendered to Thy Father by the confession, if one may say such a thing, which Thou didst make to Him of our sins, in the Garden of Olives and by the humiliation, contrition and penance Thou didst bear for them! 0 m y Saviour, engrave deep within me a great hatred, abhorrence and fear of sin, greater than all the other evils on earth and in hell and let me die a thousand deaths rather than offend Thee again.

Xvi. Nature of Contrition

Contrition is so powerful, so holy and so desirable that a single act of true contrition is capable of wiping out a thousand mortal sills, if they were to be found in the soul.

Contrition is an act of hatred and abhorrence, of sorrow and repentance at the sight of a sin you have committed, because this sin offends God. It is an act of the will, by which you tell God that you desire to hate and detest your sins, that you are filled with shame for having committed them, and that you renounce them earnestly, not for your own interests but because of His. By this I mean, not so much because of the evil , injury and harm you have done to yourself, as because of the dishonor, great sufferings and most cruel death you have caused Our Lord to suffer by your sins.

It is true that the very slightest offense- against the infinite goodness

of God is so detestable that even if you were to weep until the day of judgment, or even if you were to die of grief over the smallest of your faults, it would not be enough. Nevertheless, in order to have contrition it i s not absolutely necessary to shed tears, nor to conceive a pain that can be felt, nor a sensible feeling of anguish over our ,sins. Contrition is an interior and spiritual act of the will which is a spiritual power and not a faculty of sense; therefore, you may make an act of contrition without any sensible pain. It is enough to assure Our Lord, with the real will to carry out what you promise, that you want to hate and detest your sins and to avoid them in future, because they displease Him, and that you shall confess them at your next confession.

It should also be remembered that contrition is a gift of God and an effect of grace. Even if you had perfect knowledge of its essence and applied all the strength Of your mind and will to make an act of contrition, you would never be able to do so if the Holy Spirit did not give you grace. But you may console yourself with the thought that this grace will never be refused if you ask for it with humility, confidence and perseverance, and if you do not wait until the hour of your death to ask for it. For grace is ordinarily refused, in that last hour, to those who have neglected it during their lifetime.

Notice, also, that four things are necessary for true contrition. The first of these is to make restitution, at the earliest possible opportunity of things belonging to others, if you have anything that it i s possible to return; also to restore the good name of another when you have robbed him of it by calumny o r backbiting.

The second thing is to do everything in your power to bring about reconciliation with those with whom you are at odds.

The third is to have a firm and constant will, not only to confess your sins and renounce them, but also to use the necessary remedies and means to overcome evil habits, and to begin to live a truly Christian life.

The fourth thing is effectively to give up all active and passive occasions of sin-that is, the occasions you give others to offend God, as well as those by which you yourself are led into sin.

Such occasions are, for instance: for the promiscuously impure and

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the adulterous, their partners in evil; for drunkards, their taverns; for gamblers and blasphemers, their games, when they have the habit of swearing and blaspheming or losing very much time and money at these pastimes; women and girls should avoid the least thing that tends to immodesty in dress, as well as excessive novelty and vanity in the matter of fashions; others should give up bad books, improper pictures, the wrong kind of parties and shows, and avoid certain groups, or certain individuals, as well as certain occupations which lead them into sin.

The Son of God Himself says: "If thy hand, or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into hell fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire" (Matt. 18, 8-9). He is giving you here an absolute commandment under pain of eternal damnation (as the holy Fathers explain these words of Sacred Scripture), to cut off from yourself and entirely renounce all things that are occasions of ruin for yourself and others, even those which are not in themselves evil, even occupations and professions, if you cannot follow them without sinning, as well as things that are most close and dear and precious to you, if these things might occasion the loss of your soul.

Acts of contrition may be made at all times and in every situation, but they should be made particularly at such times as:

1. When you go to confession, for perfect contrition or at the very least attrition, which i s imperfect contrition, is a necessary part of Penance. That is why I said above and here repeat, that, before you go to confession and after your examination of conscience, you should ask God for contrition and then try to make genuine acts of sorrow for sin.

2. When you have fallen into sin, so that you may instantly rise again by means of contrition

3. In the morning and evening, so that if you have committed any sins during the night or in the day, they may be wiped out by contrition, and so you may always keep in God's grace. For this cause

I have set down various acts of contrition in the evening exercise, following the examination of conscience.

But over and above this, to give you readier access to the means and method of practising so necessary and important a virtue, which you need at every moment of your life, I have also added several varied acts of contrition which you may use, taking now one, now another, according to the promptings and guidance of the Spirit of God.

But do not make the mistake of imagining that, in order to have contrition for your sins, it i s sufficient to read and pronounce with attention the acts set down in this book, or Others like them. True contrition must be accompanied by the conditions described above, but you must also remember i n particular that you can not make a single act of contrition without a special grace from God. Therefore, when you want to have true repentance and contrition for your faults, be sure to pray Our Lord to give you grace to do so.