How to prepare for General Confession

What is a general confession?

A general confession consists in repeating the confessions done in the past, with the purpose of attaining more graces and preparing for some significant event in one’s life.

How can I prepare for a General Confession?

To prepare for it, these are some good recommendations:

• Set aside a few days to recollect, get rid of distractions, abstain from worldly entertainments, and do some particular mortifications.
• When you start preparing your examination of conscience, ask God for his grace and light to know your sins, and to cast them away. You should ask particularly for Light from the Holy Ghost, and for the intercession of Our Blessed Lady.
• Examine yourself in each one of the Ten Commandments, taking one at a time, and thinking back throughout your life, from the beginning till now, of all the times where you might have trespassed against it. It also helps to go over the places you have been, or the people you have met.
• If you must, you can write these things down, but if you do so, do it in such a way that only you are able to understand it. Also make sure the paper is destroyed after confession.
• Once you have finished, Ask God pardon for your sins, and the grace to do a good confession.
• Schedule a special date and time with a Priest to go to confession. Sundays or regular confession times are usually not very opportune for a General Confession.

It is also good to remember:

What is necessary for a Confession to be fruitful?

• To do a good examination of Conscience.
• To elicit contrition, that is, repentance for our sins.
• To make a resolution never to commit them again.
• To confess them to the Priest, and receive absolution.
• To perform the penance imposed by the Priest.

From all these points, you will want to focus particularly on Contrition and Resolution, since, the more intense these acts, the more graces you will receive when you go to confession. It might be fitting here, to go over the qualities of a good act of Contrition:

What are the qualities of a good act of Contrition?

• Interior – (Not based on feeling, but on the will)
• Universal – (It should cover all mortal sins)
• Supreme – (It should be our greatest sorrow)
• Supernatural – (It should be based on motives of faith. The most perfect of which, is the Love of God.)

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