If you had a suspicious lump or mole in a private area, you might be embarrassed to talk about it with a doctor and show it to him for examination. But if you didn’t have it examined, you might allow it time to grow, spread, and eat away at your body until it was too late to cure you. The same holds true for sin, which might be called a disease of the soul. If you go to confession now, you can receive the graces to wipe away your sin and strengthen you against committing it in the future. But if you wait, particularly if you wait five years, you might not physically die but you might harden your heart against God (spiritual death).
Go to confession now and do not be afraid. You won’t be telling the priest anything he hasn’t heard before in one way or another; and, like a doctor who uses privacy drapes when examining a private area on a patient’s body, the priest will do everything he can to ease your humiliation. You might even start out by telling him, “Father, I have a sin that is humiliating for me to confess. Will you please help me to make a good confession?”
