accept from him disgrace for your sins, so that by being disgraced, you might avoid
eternal shame.
Do not go into detail in confessing carnal acts, lest you become a traitor to yourself.
During the time of oneÁ-?s confession not only the person who makes his confession is
judged, but the confessor as well. In the past, confessors were practical. They did not
judge on the basis of the seriousness of a transgression, but rather on the intent. They did
not concentrate so much on the sins being confessed as on thinking of how to treat the
repentant personÁ-?s soul.
If you want cure your soul, you need four things. The first is to forgive your enemies. The
second is to confess thoroughly. The third is to blame yourself. The fourth is to resolve to
sin no more. If we wish to be saved, we must always blame ourselves and not attribute
our wrong acts to others. And God, Who is most compassionate, will forgive us.
medicine for evil is confession, and care to avoid stumbling.
Let us then not be ashamed to confess our sins unto the Lord. Shame indeed there is when
each makes known his sins, but that shame, as it were, ploughs his land, removed the
ever-recurring brambles, prunes the thorns, and gives life to the fruits which he believed
were dead. Follow him who, by diligently ploughing his field, sought for eternal fruit:
"being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being defames we entreat, we are
made as the offscouring of the world." If you plough after this fashion you will sow
spiritual seed. Plough that you may get rid of sin and gain fruit. He ploughed so as to
destroy in himself the last tendency to persecution. What more could Christ give to lead
us on to the pursuit of perfection, than to convert and then give us for a teacher one who
was a persecutor?
Our sins are forgiven us at each confession, but we must remember that there is the