Quotes about Penitence

O God, our merciful Father, by Your Holy Law do You work in us the true knowledge of our sin, that our heart may be penitent, and our soul humble before You. Blot out our iniquities with the blood of Your Son, cleanse our souls from the dark spots with which we have soiled them, and comfort us with the assurance of Your grace. Build Your Church with us and our children, that Your name may be glorified by many generations. Amen.

Unless we are prepared to see these events — the Jesus-events, the messianic moment — as the ultimate call to penitence, because they are the ultimate announcement of the arrival of God's kingdom, we will be bound to over-interpret other events to compensate.

As good heirs of the Bible, we think that a great misfortune necessarily follows a great infraction. In this respect the intellectual caste, in our world, is the penitential class par excellence, continuing the role of the clergy under the Old Regime. We have to call its members what they are: officials of original sin.

I have sewn sackcloth over my skin; I have buried my horn in the dust.

On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.

I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it.

Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.

She'd once admitted during confession that she felt doomed to bear only sons, like a curse from the Devil. In penitence she was ordered to recite a rosary every day for two years straight and to make a sizable donation to the church renovation fund. Her husband forbade her from returning to confession.

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.

High justice would in no way be debased if ardent love should cancel instantly the debts these penitents must satisfy.

Tears that are shed in time of affliction are rarely tears of penitence, but more likely they are shed out of self pity and pain or sorrow.

If thou hast sinned, lie not down without repentance; for the want of repentance, after one has sinned, makes the heart yet harder and harder.