MEDITATION XXXI.
ON PREPARATION TO RECEIVE THE HOLY SACRAMENT OF PENANCE.
The end of this meditation is, before my confession to make so perfect a judgment of myself as may make plain all the difficulties that may happen in the sacramental judgment to be made by the confessor, that I may be secure in the last judgment which the Supreme Judge is to make of me. In this judgment I myself must execute the office of the accuser, the witness, the judge and the tormentor. And upon this St Gregory says, that " conscientia accusat, ratio judical timor ligat, dolor excruciat [1] my conscience is to accuse me of all my sins without omitting any one. My reason is to judge what I merit for them, sentencing me to be worthy of great punishment for having committed them. The fear of Almighty God and of His rigorous judgment is to bind me, and to oblige me humbly to undergo what penance soever reason shall dictate and the confessor shall impose upon me. And sorrow, as an executioner, is to torment me, breaking and shivering my heart for the offences I have done to my Creator. These four judicial acts am I to do within the hall of my heart, quickening them with the considerations which are ordained to this end; and much more with the remembrance of the presence of Almighty God, the judge of the living and of the dead, whom I must behold seated in the " throne" of His majesty, as has been declared in the ninth meditation, because the view of this most righteous Judge will be a motive to make me do it with greater diligence. [2]
