Untitled - Saints' Books

INSTR. iv.] The Sacrament of Penance. 275
ceiving all the poor, the ignorant, and the vicious.
Some hear the confessions only of pious persons; but
when a poor peasant comes with a conscience loaded
with sins, they hear him with impatience, and send him
away with reproaches. Hence the miserable man, who
must have done great violence to himself in resolving
to go to confession, seeing himself dismissed in such a
manner, will conceive a horror for the sacrament, and a
dread of approaching it any more, and thus, through
despair, will abandon himself to a dissolute life. To
such confessors the Redeemer (who came to save sin
ners, and was therefore full of charity) says what he
said to his disciples: You know not of what spirit you
are. But such is not the conduct of confessors who, in
obedience to the exhortation of the Apostle, put on the
bowels of charity: Put ye on, therefore, as the elect of God,
. . . the bowels of mercy? When a sinner comes to con
fession, the more abandoned he is, the more they labor
to assist him, and the greater the charity with which
they treat him. You are not, says Hugo of St. Victor,
appointed judges of crimes, to chastise, but, as it were,
judges of maladies to :
heal." It is indeed necessary to
admonish the sinner, in order to make him understand
his miserable state, and the danger of damnation to
which he is exposed; but he must be always admonished
with charity, he must be excited to confidence in the
divine mercy, and must be taught the means by which
he may amend his life. And though the confessor
should be obliged to defer absolution, he ought to dis
miss the penitent with sweetness; fixing a day for him
to return, and pointing out the remedies that he must
" 1
2 "
Nescitis cujus spiritus estis." Ltike, ix. 55.
Induite vos ergo, sicut elect! Dei, sancti et dilecti, viscera miseri
cord iae." Col. iii. 12.
3 "Vos non, quasi judices criminum, ad percutiendum positi estis,
sed, quasi judices morborum, ad sanandum." Misc. 1. I, tit. 49.