Prayer to St. Gerard for a Good Confession
O Great Patron of a Good Confession, St. Gerard! O thou who didst give courage to souls whom fear and shame had overcome! O thou who didst make known to poor sinners the sins willfully concealed from the minister of God! O thou who didst give sorrow to their heart, resolution to their wills, truth to their lips, help me! I wish to make a good confession. If there be any mortal sin which, through my own fault, I have not confessed, bring it clearly before my mind. Help me to know my sins. Obtain for me true sorrow for them, and a firm purpose never to offend God again by mortal sin. And when I am kneeling in the confessional, be with me, and help me to tell my sins in spite of fear or shame. St. Gerard, in thy hands I place this confession. Be thou to me what thou wast to many another soul, “an angel of God sent to deliver me from hell. Amen
“. . . all things are seen in God . . . He holds them all in Himself . . . Let us say that the Divinity is like a very clear diamond . . . that all we do is seen in this diamond, which is of such a sort that it includes everything in itself . . . Oh, who will make this understood by those who commit very lewd and foul sins, that they may remember that they are not hidden, and that rightly God resents them, since they take place in the very presence of His Majesty, and we comport ourselves so irreverently before Him!”
“If you perform a virtuous deed at the cost of great effort, the labor passes away but the virtue remains, but if you take delight in some sinful deed, the pleasure passes away but the sin remains.”
Guides for Making a Good Confession
“I saw how truly hell is deserved through only one mortal sin because one cannot understand how dreadfully serious it is to commit this before such awesome Majesty and how far from what He is are things of this sort.”
A Guide for Priests
“Once, while approaching to receive Communion, I saw with my soul’s eyes more clearly than with my bodily eyes two devils whose appearance was abominable. It seems to me their horns were wrapped around the poor priest’s throat [. . .] and I understood that that soul was in mortal sin. [. . .] The Lord Himself told me to pray for him and that He had permitted it so that I might understand the power of the words of consecration and how God does not fail to be present, however evil the priest who recites them, and that I might see His great goodness since He places Himself in those hands of His enemy, and all out of love for me and for everyone. I understood well how much more priests are obliged to be good than are others, how deplorable a thing it is to receive this most Blessed Sacrament unworthily, and how much the devil is lord over the soul in mortal sin.”
Aids to Overcoming Sin and Amending Our Lives
Pray for the Gift of Compunction
“Compuction of heart is a treasure infinitely to be desired and unspeakable gladness to the heart. It is healing to the soul. It is remission of sins. It brings back again the Holy Ghost into the humble and loving heart.”
“What does not lead to God is a lie; what flatters the flesh endangers salvation. Do you not know the danger you risk in letting your eyes enjoy what they wish? Is it not written: ‘He who loves danger shall perish in it?’”
Pray and Work to Forgive Offenses
In Practicing for Heaven
Perpetually Pursue Self-knowledge
“self-knowledge is so important that, even if you were raised right up to the heavens, I should like you never to relax your cultivation of it”
Some Challenging Moral Issues in Our Times
Whether to Attend a Marriage
Drugs and Drunkenness
Same Sex Attraction
Scrupulosity
Influence of T.V.
Dancing
Influence of Music
Voting
Tattoos
Help Maintain this School for Saints
“He whose health will not permit him to fast in honour of Christ and our Blessed Lady, will please them much more by giving some alms more than usual.”—St. Philip Neri
“May we all be saved souls together in heaven.”