The pope centered his March 8 speech, held in the Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace, on the Act of Contrition, the prayer recited by each penitent during the sacrament of reconciliation. While its language may be “somewhat old-fashioned,” the pope said, he expressed that it is a “simple and rich prayer” built upon three main pillars: repentance, trust, and resolve.
Francis explained that the first pillar, or attitude, of repentance is characterized by the words “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” It is the recognition of our “wretchedness in the face of God’s infinite love,” which creates an “experience that moves our soul to ask him for forgiveness, confident in his fatherliness.”
The pope noted that this “sense of sin is proportional precisely to the perception of God’s infinite love. The more we feel his tenderness, the more we desire to be in full communion with him and the more the ugliness of evil in our life becomes apparent to us.”
The Holy Father said this awareness, which can be thought of as “repentance” or “contrition,” is the catalyst for self-reflection and conversion, with the Holy Father noting: “Let us remember that God never tires of forgiving us, and on our part, let us never tire of asking for forgiveness.”
Building upon the centrality of God’s love in the sacrament, the pope observed that for priests “it is beautiful to hear, on the lips of a penitent, the acknowledgment of both God’s infinite goodness and his primacy, in one’s own life, of love for him.”
“To love ‘above all else,’” the pope continued, “means to place God at the center of everything, as the light on the path and the foundation for every order of values, entrusting everything to him. And this is a primacy that inspires every other love.”
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