Read what is said on this subject in the "Devout life" and the
"Conferences."
[Footnote 1: Matt. xi. 28.] [Footnote 2: By the recent Decree of Pope Pius X., His Holiness desires that, with such dispositions, it should be daily.—[Ed.]
UPON CONFESSION.
Our Blessed Father thought so much of frankness, candour and ingenuousness in Confession, that when he met with these virtues in his penitents he was filled with joy and satisfaction.
It happened one day that he received a letter from one of his spiritual daughters telling him that she had been betrayed into the sin of malicious envy (by which she meant jealousy) of one of her sisters. He answered her letter as follows: "I tell you with truth that your letter has filled my soul with so sweet a perfume, that I can affirm that I have not for a long time read any thing so consoling. I repeat, my dear daughter, that this letter awakens in me such fresh ardour of love towards God who is so good, and towards you whom He desires to make so good, that I can only make an act of thanksgiving for this to His divine Providence. Thus it is, my daughter, that we must always without a moment's hesitation thrust our hands into the secret recesses of our hearts to tear out the foul growths which have sprung up there, from the mingling of our self-love with our humours, inclinations, and antipathies. Oh, my God! What satisfaction for the heart of a most loving Father to hear a beloved daughter protest that she has been envious and malicious! How blessed is this envy, since it is followed by so frank a confession! Your hand in writing your letter made a stroke more valiant than ever did that of Alexander!"
UPON A CHANGE OF CONFESSOR.
I have told you by word of mouth, and now I repeat in writing, so that you may better remember it, that the scruple of scruples is not to dare to change one's Confessor. The Priest who should put this scruple into your head deserves to be left, as himself scrupulous, and unsafe. Virtue, like truth, is always to be found half way between two faulty extremes. To be always changing one's Confessor, and never to dare to do so, or sooner to omit Confession than to confess to any one but our usual Confessor, are two blame-worthy extremes.
In the one case we show ourselves volatile and ill-balanced; in the other we are cowardly. If you ask me which of the two is the more to be avoided I should say the second, and this because it seems to me to indicate a low tone of mind, human respect, attachment to the creature, and in general a slavish spirit which is quite contrary to the spirit of God, who only dwells there, where there is perfect liberty.
St. Paul tells us that being redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ we ought not to make ourselves slaves of men.
Possibly, however, you would more readily submit your judgment to that of our Blessed Father than to mine.