How to Make a Good Confession

Christ gave the Church the sacrament of Reconciliation on Easter evening. Standing among the disciples in the upper room, He breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they are retained" (Jn 20:22–23). Confession is not an invention of priests — it is the instrument of mercy Christ himself placed in His Church.

A good confession is not an impressive confession. It is an honest, specific, humble confession — nothing hidden from fear, nothing inflated from scrupulosity, nothing excused by circumstance. The Father already knows everything; what He waits for is the son's willingness to name it.

The sacrament is not about earning forgiveness. It is about receiving it — the way a wound is healed by unbandaging it to the physician, not by hiding it.

Preparation

Ten to twenty minutes of quiet before you go.

1. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you your sins. Not your general wretchedness (the devil specializes in vague self-disgust). Specific acts, specific omissions. "Send forth your light and your truth" (Ps 43:3).

2. Examine your conscience. Go through the Ten Commandments, or the Beatitudes, or the seven capital sins. A structured examination prevents the scatter that forgets half and invents the other. Since your last confession, consider:

• Duties to God — prayer neglected, taking His name in vain, missing Mass, skipping obligations
• Duties to neighbor — anger, gossip, impurity, dishonesty, uncharity, failures of mercy
• Duties to self — intemperance, laziness, despair, presumption
• Omissions — the good you did not do

3. Be specific about grave matter. Mortal sins (grave matter, full knowledge, deliberate consent) must be confessed by kind and number insofar as memory allows. "I committed adultery once" is a confession; "I have been unfaithful in my thoughts" is not quite enough.

4. Ask for true contrition. Perfect contrition is sorrow for having offended God who is good. Imperfect contrition (attrition) is sorrow out of fear of punishment — still enough for the sacrament. If you cannot muster feelings, ask Christ for the grace of contrition. Coming to confession is itself a sign of it.

5. Resolve to amend. Not a vow to never sin again — a real intention, here and now, to turn from the sins you are confessing. Without this, the sacrament is void.

6. Pray a short preparation prayer. "My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you..." — the Act of Contrition is the traditional text.

In the Confessional

Begin. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been [time] since my last confession. These are my sins..."

Confess. Name the sins. Briefly. Do not narrate — confess. "I was angry with my wife three times and spoke harshly" — not the whole story of the week. If you are unsure whether something is a sin, ask the priest.

Do not omit out of shame. The one thing you are most afraid to say is often the thing the sacrament exists to heal. Every priest has heard it. Christ knew it before you entered the room. Nothing a penitent can say will shock the confessional.

End. "For these and all the sins of my past life, I am sorry."

Listen. The priest may counsel you. Take it seriously; he is not performing a ritual but speaking in Christ's name. Accept the penance. If the penance is unclear or impossible, ask.

Make the Act of Contrition. Out loud, unless the priest indicates otherwise:

"O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen."

Receive absolution. Listen. "I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Make the sign of the cross. It is done. Your sins are gone. Heaven rejoices. Believe it.

After Confession

Do the penance. Soon. A penance unperformed is part of the wound left untended.

Give thanks. Five minutes of thanksgiving in the pew. You have been washed. Do not rush out of the church. Let the grace settle. A decade of the Rosary, or Anima Christi, or simply silence before the tabernacle.

Believe it. The most common post-confession temptation is to doubt that it worked — to pick at the scar. "Did I confess well enough? Did I forget something? Did I really mean it?" If you prepared honestly and the priest absolved you, it is done. Scrupulosity, not humility, is what keeps returning to the act. Humility trusts the sacrament.

Do not go back and re-confess the same sins already absolved. Unless you had deliberately concealed a mortal sin (in which case all sins since that confession must be re-confessed), the past is closed. Bring only new matter.

Note what God showed you. If the priest said something that struck you, write it down later. The Holy Spirit often uses confession to give the next step.

Resume the plan of life. A good confession does not end with the sacrament — it ends with the small, concrete change you carry out over the coming days.

How Often

The precept of the Church requires confession at least once a year, and always before receiving Communion if one is in a state of mortal sin.

But that is the floor, not the aim. The tradition — and the pastors — recommend:

• Monthly confession for anyone serious about the spiritual life. One of the most consistent pieces of advice from confessors across traditions.
• Weekly or biweekly for those in seminary, consecrated life, or in a season of particular spiritual battle.
• Whenever a mortal sin has been committed, before the next Communion. Do not postpone.
• Before major decisions, spiritual retreats, or feast days. A soul freshly absolved prays and hears differently.

St. Josemaría Escrivá called frequent confession "the soul's shower." Not because it is always for grave sins — most confessions are not — but because the soul, like the body, is not kept clean by occasional deep cleaning. It is kept clean by rinsing.

Find a confessor, not a confessional. A regular priest who knows you, if possible, will help you see patterns you cannot see alone. This is how spiritual direction often begins.