To I have to *sorrowful* for a confession?

[sidetrack]

While I do regret the sins I’ve done that I’m planning to get out hopefully this week I’m just wondering if I have to be sorrowful about it.By sorrowful I mean feeling so " down" b/c of my sins that I’m nearly on the point of crying.

 

[Trishie]

No, your awareness of the sin, your acknowledgement that you have sinned, and going to Confession with your sincere intention not to sin again is demonstration of your “true sorrow for sin.” Trust in God’s mercy and ask His grace. Crying isn’t needed, intention is more important than demonstration of emotions.

God bless you.

 

[Lancer]

Crying…no…but filial piety…yes
Excerpt from Blessed Pope JP-II’s Apostolic Letter…may be helpful.
Pax Christi

POST-SYNODAL
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
RECONCILIATION AND PENANCE
OF JOHN PAUL II
TO THE BISHOPS
CLERGY AND FAITHFUL
ON RECONCILIATION AND PENANCE
IN THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH TODAY

Reconciliation Comes from God

God is faithful to his eternal plan even when man, under the impulse of the evil one(43) and carried away by his own pride, abuses the freedom given to him in order to love and generously seek what is good, and refuses to obey his Lord and Father. God is faithful even when man, instead of responding with love to God’s love, opposes him and treats him like a rival, deluding himself and relying on his own power, with the resulting break of relationship with the one who created him. In spite of this transgression on man’s part, God remains faithful in love.

In effect, to become reconciled with God presupposes and includes detaching oneself consciously and with determination from the sin into which one has fallen. It presupposes and includes, therefore, doing penance in the fullest sense of the term: repenting, showing this repentance,** adopting a real attitude of repentance- which is the attitude of the person who starts out on the road of return to the Father**. This is a general law and one which each individual must follow in his or her particular situation. For it is** not possible to deal with sin and conversion only in abstract terms**.

The Effort of the Christian

1. But there is another aspect to the mysterium pietatis: The loving kindness of God toward the Christian must be matched by the piety of the Christian toward God. In this second meaning of the word, piety (eusebeia) means precisely the conduct of the Christian who responds to God’s fatherly loving kindness with his own filial Piety.

In this sense too we can say with St. Paul that "great indeed is the mystery of our religion. In this sense too piety, as a force for conversion and reconciliation, confronts iniquity and sin. In this case too the essential aspects of the mystery of Christ are the object of piety in the sense that the Christian accepts the mystery, contemplates it and draws from it the spiritual strength necessary for living according to the Gospel. Here too one must say that “no one born of God commits sin”; but the expression has an imperative sense: Sustained by the mystery of Christ as by an interior source of spiritual energy,** the Christian,being a child of God, is warned not to sin and indeed receives the commandment not to sin but to live in a manner worthy of “the house of God, that is, the church of the living God.”**(109)

Given in Rome at St. Peter’s on December 2, the first Sunday of Advent, in the year 1984, the seventh of my pontificate.

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia_en.html

 

[DaveBj]

I would be so screwed if I had to demonstrate the emotional level of contrition described in the Fathers before I could receive absolution from the Church. I am not by any means one of those who believes that “real men don’t cry,” but I am unable to cry and have been so for decades.

 

[Bookcat]

Contrition is more a matter of the will.

Feelings may or may not accompany such.

 

[ConstantineTG]

What God requires is repentance, that is the resolve to change your ways.

 

[odile53]

When I do my particular examen before confession, I start by understanding that even if I were the only person in the world that ever existed, Christ would still have died to redeem me. Therefore, my sins put those nails into Him, even if it occurred two thousand more or less years before I existed. That thought is usually enough to make me appreciate how much I have hurt God, and how sorry I am for that. No, I don’t burst out wailing right there in the church, but it is a somber thought.

 

[Scriptorium]

While I do regret the sins I’ve done that I’m planning to get out hopefully this week I’m just wondering if I have to be sorrowful about it.By sorrowful I mean feeling so " down" b/c of my sins that I’m nearly on the point of crying.

No, but asking the question makes me feel like you’re holding back. If you’ve offended your beloved, then you should be sorrowful. Until confession, there is no cause for joy. Count your lucky stars that he gives you the grace to see the sin, Whether you cry or not should not be the matter per se, but you should be sorrowful. Read Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale.

Except:
"The third sign [of sorrowful bitterness of heart] is how your confession should be full of tears, if one is able, and if one is not able to weep with his bodily eyes, let him weep in heart. Such was the confession of Saint Peter, because after he had forsaken Jesus Christ, he went out and wept very bitterly (993-996).