Yes, it is God who forgive us! The use of the sacramentals are aides to grace, that gain us forgiveness because we use them with devotion and they inspire it in us.
St. Charles Borromeo went to Confession more than once a day, regularly. This can be quite helpful at times, yet is for people who are not scrupulous.
Perhaps this will help too.
If we commit faults, says St. Augustine, let us at least confess and detest them, and God will pardon them. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. To obtain the remission of venial faults, Louis de Blois says that it is enough to confess them in general. And in another place he writes that such sins are more easily cancelled by turning to God with humility and love than by stopping to dwell upon them with too much fear. St. Francis de Sales also has written that as the daily faults of spiritual souls are indeliberately committed, so they are indeliberately taken away. He meant to say what St. Thomas teaches, that for the remission of venial sins " it is sufficient to detest them either explicitly or even implicitly, for example, by a fervent act of the love of God." The holy Doctor then says: “The remission of venial sins is brought about in three ways: 1. By infusion of divine grace; in this way by means of the Holy Eucharist and the other sacraments such sins are remitted; 2. By acts that include a movement of detestation, and thus by a general confession of sins, by striking the breast, by reciting an Our Father , we obtain the remission of such sins; 3. By every act of religion towards God and the things of God, such as the receiving of the blessing from a bishop, to take holy water, to pray in a consecrated church.” Speaking of the holy Communion, St. Bernardine of Sienna says: “It may happen that after Communion the soul finds itself so absorbed in God that all venial sins disappear before the fervor of its devotion.”
The Venerable Louis da Ponte used to say: “I have committed many faults, but I have never made peace with my faults. Many make peace with their defects, and this shall cause their ruin.” St. Bernard says that as long as a person detests his imperfections, there is reason to hope that he shall return to the straight path; but when he commits faults knowingly and deliberately, and when the commission of them excites neither fear nor remorse, they shall by degrees bring him to ruin. Dying flies, says the Holy Ghost, spoil the sweetness of the ointment. Dying flies are the faults that are committed but not detested; for they remain dead in the soul. “When a fly,” says Denis the Carthusian, “falls into a sweet-smelling ointment and remains therein, it will injure the ointment and its good odor. If we apply this to the spiritual life, the dead flies represent our idle thoughts, illicit affections, voluntary distractions things that spoil the sweetness of the ointment, that is, the sweetness attached to the exercises of piety.”
St. Bernard writes, that to say this is a light sin is not a great evil, but to commit it, and take complacency in it, is an evil of great moment, and shall, according to the words of St. Luke, be severely chastised by God. And that servant that knew the will of his Lord, and did not according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." It is true that even spiritual persons are not free from light transgressions; “but,” says Father Alvarez, " they daily diminish the number and grievousness of their faults, and afterwards efface them by acts of divine love." Whoever acts in this manner shall acquire sanctity: neither shall his defects hinder him from tending to perfection. Hence Louis de Blois tells us not to be disheartened by these little faults, be cause we have several means of expiating them: “If every day we fall several times, it will depend entirely on us to employ every day the means of atoning for our faults.” But how can he that entertains an attachment for any earthly good, and voluntarily falls and relapses into that attachment without any wish to get rid of it, advance in the way of God? The bird that escapes from the net instantly takes flight; but as long as it is held even by a slender thread, it remains on the earth. " Every little thread of attachment to this world," says St. John of the Cross, “impedes the spiritual progress of the soul.”
St. Alphonsus Maria de Ligouri
So, we must aim to never voluntarily commit venial sins, and then we are truly on the right path.
