“General Confession plays a very important part in our life, that is, a General Confession in privacy between the Confessor and the individual penitent.
A General Confession should cover the time between one’s First Confession up to the present time, unless a General Confession was made in between this time, then the General Confession need only be remembered back to the time of the last General Confession.
Why a General Confession? To confess one’s sins weekly or monthly puts the emphasis on what comes to mind ‘immediately’ as offenses to God and against God, but a General Confession based on the Ten Commandments forces one to delve into the minutest moral failure, and minutest detail of things that could have slipped by, or that could have become a habit, and instead of confessing these things, one has begun to accept them as possibly ‘not so bad’.
General Confession alerts one to the importance of all sins, and a General Confession elaborates on the need for complete obedience to God’s Commandments.
A sincere, complete, full General Confession at different times in one’s life promotes a feeling of deep concern to ‘avoid or correct’ offenses that are obviously offensive to God. There is great importance in becoming aware that one has made small offenses against God part of his or her life, accepting them as a normal weakness or failure in personality, nature, or due to environment. Excuses can compound themselves until someone looks at all things realistically, and in direct association with the Ten Commandments.
The Sacrament of Penance, through Confession, is good for the Soul. General Confession places a tremendous importance on the ‘value’ of Confession, the ‘need’ for Confession, the ‘importance’ of Confession, the ‘dignity’ of Confession, the ‘humility’ of Confession, the ‘purpose’ of Confession, and the priest’s position as the Confessor who is taking the place of Christ Himself, hopefully to help the penitent reclaim sound moral values and sound moral standards, eliminating excuses, bad habits, and weak standards of evaluation regarding one’s own actions, temper, faults, and unsound moral values and standards.
General Confession is a beautiful way to ‘conquer’ one’s weaknesses, impure thinking, and to have a beautiful beginning to not just refresh one’s mind, but to set new standards, new goals for the good of one’s Soul.
General Confession is a Blessing granted to us, for us to retreat long enough to re-evaluate ourselves, what we are doing and what direction we are taking to reorganize our way of life, and to re-establish our manner of thinking, our moral conduct, and our moral views.”
