To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.

the protective, healing silence of forgiveness is just as much part of confession as its quality of judgment - stressed so much more. For in confession sin is not so much subjected to the light of the word, of judicial sentence, as received into the darkness of merciful, secret acceptance, sunk into divine oblivion.

Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.

Some people confess guilt to claim credit for the sin.

Confession, he said, must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.

The third big idea is that we confess our sins to someone close to us--a friend or our spouse. I don't mean a public declaration of our shortcomings; I mean confession in the security of a trusted and living friend.

Secret guilt is by silence revealed.

It went without saying that he felt guilty about what had happened, but married friends had assured him that guilt was the cornerstone of any good marriage. It meant that a conscience was at work, values were held in high esteem, and reasons to feel guilty were best avoided whenever possible.

The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.

For every deed has a consequence. And we can never be granted protection against the faults that we refuse to acknowledge or that we are unwilling to confess. So, look. Who should you confess to? I don’t want to confess. Who should you confess to? Who should I confess to? Who should we confess to? First, you confess to God. And everyone of us that are here today, that knows that we have done wrong, we have to go to God and speak to Him in the privacy of our rooms and confess. He already knows, but when you confess, you’re relieving your soul of the burden that it bears.

"So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?" Horror, disbelief in his voice.

Deprived for some time of the outward and, so to speak, "commercial" aspects, it is a time of special grace. Indeed, sins need God's forgiveness above all, but then also a purification, to be carried out here below, or, after death, in purgatory. Sacramental absolution in confession removes guilt and restores friendship with God, but there remains the duty of purification of the negative imprint left by the evil done and of reparation. This is the indulgence, through which we draw from the treasure of the Church, that is, from the merits acquired from Christ, Our Lady and the Saints. The indulgence can only be obtained once a day and can also be applied to our deceased loved ones by helping them in their purification process.

If you confess your sins, you must confess them to God; we are but his witnesses.

Secret guilt by silence is betrayed.