we must also detest them in our hearts as the greatest evil, and sincerely wish we had not committed them.
'Rend your hearts, and not your garments' (Joel ii. 13). ' A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise' (Ps. 1. 19).
26. How must Contrition be ' universal'?
We must be sorry for all the sins we have committed, or, at least, for all mortal sins.
27. If a penitent has no sorrow for his venial sins, would his Confession nevertheless be valid?
If he has to confess venial sins only, and is not truly sorry for any one of them, his Confession is null.
If since our last Confession we have to accuse ourselves of venial sins only, and, because they do not seem to be grievous, we doubt whether we have sufficient Contrition for them, it is advisable to repent again of some grievous sin of our former life, which we have already confessed, and to include it in our Confession, saying at the end of it: ' For these, and all my other sins which I cannot at present call to my remembrance, and also for the sins of my past life, especially for ... I am heartily sorry,' etc. This should also be done when we are not quite certain whether we have committed any sin since the last Confession.
28. How must Contrition be ' supernatural '?
The sorrow for our sins must arise not from the consideration of their natural evil consequences, but from supernatural motives; namely, because we have offended God, lost his grace, deserved hell, etc.
29. Would it not, then, be sufficient to be sorry for our sins on account of the temporal loss incurred by them?
To be sorry for our sins only because we have lost by them our health, property, reputation, etc., is nothing but a natural sorrow, which is of no avail for everlasting life.
Thus the sorrow of King Saul, Antiochus, and others was a merely natural sorrow; on the contrary, that of King David, Mary Magdalen, Zacheus, the Apostles Peter and Paul, and other Scripture penitents, was supernatural.
