How to Grow in Contrition

The penitent's first act

Of all the acts by which the sinner returns to God, contrition holds first place. The Catechism states it bluntly, echoing the Council of Trent:

"Among the penitent's acts, contrition occupies first place. Contrition is 'sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again.'" — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1451^[4]

This primacy is not an honorary ranking: it is causal. Confession lists sins, satisfaction repairs the wrong, but it is contrition that turns the heart. One can recite all one's sins without contrition — that would be an inventory, not a conversion. Conversely, a single act of perfect contrition suffices, even without a priest, to reconcile the soul with God — provided it includes the firm resolve to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible (CCC § 1452). Contrition is thus the mainspring of the whole penitential movement: everything else depends on it; nothing replaces it.

"A broken and crushed heart, O God, thou wilt not despise"

Scripture never asks God first for sacrifices, but for a changed heart. The great penitential psalm, the Miserere, attributed to David after his sin, makes this its high point:

"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and crushed heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." — Psalm 50:19^[5]

The prophet Joel says it again with a striking image: what must be torn is not the garments — the outward gesture of mourning — but the heart itself:

"Yet even now — says the Lord — return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning! Rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love, and repents of evil." — Joel 2:12-13^[6]

The whole biblical logic of contrition is here: God does not despise the broken heart; He awaits it. The only sacrifice He refuses to disdain is that of a soul that lets itself be crushed by regret for having offended Him. To grow in contrition is to enter into this logic: to offer God, not compensations, but a heart that is finally pliable.

What opens the door to forgiveness

Contrition is not only the penitent's first act: it is the condition without which forgiveness cannot be received. God forgives freely, but He does not forgive us in spite of ourselves: there must be a heart that consents to be forgiven — that is, that detests what it asks to see blotted out. The Council of Trent teaches it: this movement of contrition "was at all times necessary for obtaining the forgiveness of sins"^[7]. Saint Catherine of Siena, in the Dialogue, hears the Eternal Father tell her so in person:

"So you see that atonement for the fault lies in the perfect contrition of the heart, and not in temporal sufferings." — The Eternal Father to Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue^[8]

Here is the practical reason for cultivating contrition: it is the key to the sacrament. An absolution received upon an uncontrite heart remains sterile, like a key turned in a rusted lock. An absolution received upon a heart crushed by love instantly restores the life of grace. No wonder the saints begged so earnestly to obtain this sorrow: they knew it is worth more than all penances.

Before the means, one decisive clarification: many confuse contrition with a feeling — the emotion of guilt, the tightening of the heart, tears. True contrition is something else, and defining it exactly is already half the journey. For one can have real contrition without feeling anything, and feel much without any contrition.

A sorrow of the soul, not an emotion

The Council of Trent's definition, taken up by the Catechism, speaks of a "sorrow of the soul" (animi dolor) — not a sorrow of the nerves or of sensibility. Saint Thomas Aquinas specifies that contrition resides chiefly in the will, not in sensibility: it is the voluntary displeasure at the sin committed, whether or not it is accompanied by felt emotion^[9]. This is crucial for practical life: a dry soul, unable to weep, can possess perfect contrition, provided it wills never to have sinned and detests its sin above all else. Conversely, a lively emotion before one's faults, if it does not change the will, is mere remorse.

Saint Thomas takes up a definition tradition ascribes to Saint Gregory, which says everything in a few words:

"Contrition is a humility of spirit annihilating sin between hope and fear." — Definition attributed to Saint Gregory, quoted by Saint Thomas Aquinas^[10]

Three words of this formula illuminate all growth. Humility of spirit: contrition is born when the soul stops justifying itself and acknowledges itself a sinner. Annihilating sin: it does not merely deplore sin, it destroys it in the will. Between hope and fear: it stands exactly at the point of balance between the fear that prevents presumption and the hope that prevents despair — like the virtue of hope itself (see How to Grow in Hope).

The etymology: a crushed heart

The genius of the word contrition deserves a pause, for it governs the entire spirituality of this sorrow. Saint Thomas explains why the act that obtains forgiveness received this name borrowed from the grinding of hard materials:

"Things are said to be broken when they are divided into large parts, but ground when what was solid in itself is reduced to tiny parts. Now, for the remission of sin it is required that a man cast off entirely his attachment to sin, which implies a kind of continuity and solidity in his mind. That is why the act that obtains forgiveness is called 'contrition,' by metaphor." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences (= Supplement, q. 1, a. 1)^[11]

Sin hardens. It forms in the soul a crust, a compact clinging to evil — what Scripture calls the "heart of stone" (Ezek 36:26). Contrition is the act by which this stone is ground down. To grow in contrition, then, is not to accumulate sadness; it is to consent to God breaking ever more deeply within us our attachment to evil, until nothing hard remains to be forgiven. The psalm said it all already: cor contritum — a heart reduced to dust, and which God, for that very reason, "will not despise."

The two components: detesting evil, resolving to leave it

Trent's definition articulates contrition into two inseparable movements, one turned toward the past, the other toward the future:

• detestation of the sin committed — the soul looks at what it has done and rejects it as a real evil, because it offends God;
• the resolve to sin no more — the soul looks to the future and firmly wills to break with evil and its occasions.

These two components command each other. To detest past sin without resolving to leave it would be sterile regret; to resolve to amend without detesting what one has done would be a resolution without roots. The Council insists: true contrition contains "not only the cessation of sin, and the purpose and beginning of a new life, but also hatred of the old life"^[12]. That is why a contrition that entails no concrete decision — fleeing this occasion, breaking this habit, repairing this wrong — is not yet ripe. The resolution is the test of the sorrow's sincerity.

Perfect and imperfect contrition (attrition)

The most important distinction, and the most consoling, is that of the two motives from which contrition can arise. The Catechism states it plainly.

Perfect contrition proceeds from love:

"When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called 'perfect' (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1452^[13]

Imperfect contrition, or attrition, proceeds from a lower yet already good motive, itself already a gift of God:

"The contrition called 'imperfect' (or 'attrition') is also a gift of God, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is born of the consideration of the ugliness of sin or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner (contrition of fear). Such a stirring of conscience can initiate an interior process which, under the prompting of grace, will be brought to completion by sacramental absolution. By itself, however, imperfect contrition cannot obtain the forgiveness of grave sins, but it disposes one to obtain forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1453^[14]

Two practical consequences, one reassuring, the other demanding. Reassuring: one does not need perfect sorrow to be absolved; attrition suffices for validly receiving the sacrament. No one is therefore barred from confession on the pretext that he does not yet love God "above all else": salutary fear or horror of sin already opens the door. Demanding: to grow in contrition is precisely to raise the motive — to pass from fear of punishment to love of the God offended. Attrition is a beginning; perfect contrition is the goal. The following table fixes this discernment.

*Perfect contrition remits mortal sin as soon as it is made, but it always includes the will to have recourse to confession as soon as possible (CCC § 1452; Council of Trent, DS 1677).

Distinguishing contrition from mere remorse

One last trap remains: confusing contrition with remorse. Saint Paul gives the decisive criterion by opposing two sorrows:

"For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, whereas worldly grief produces death." — Second Letter to the Corinthians 7:10^[15]

The Gospel sets the two side by side. Peter and Judas both sinned gravely; both felt sorrow. But Peter, meeting Christ's gaze, "went out and wept bitterly" (Lk 22:62) — his sorrow brought him back to the Master^[16]. Judas, "seized with remorse," gave back the money and then hanged himself (Mt 27:3-5) — his sorrow locked him in despair^[17]. Same fault, same apparent sorrow, opposite outcome: the one is contrition, the other remorse. The criterion is not the intensity of the pain but its direction: contrition leads back to God and hopes for forgiveness; remorse turns in on itself and despairs of obtaining it. To grow in contrition is to learn to weep like Peter, never like Judas.

Like hope, to which it is close, contrition stands between two abysses. By default it collapses into the despair of false remorse; by excess — or rather by lukewarmness — it dissolves into a false peace that never converts. Saint Gregory's definition said it: contrition annihilates sin "between hope and fear." Too much fear without hope breaks the soul; too much assurance without fear puts it to sleep.

The false remorse that despairs

The first pitfall is that of Judas: a real sorrow, but without hope, that folds back upon the greatness of the fault instead of opening to the greatness of forgiveness. It has the appearance of humility — "my sin is too great" — but it hides a secret pride: judging one's fault stronger than God's mercy. Saint Catherine of Siena hears the Eternal Father denounce this refusal to hope as the sin "which is forgiven neither in this world nor in the next": at his last moment, the soul "will have judged its misery greater than my mercy"^[18]. The remedy is not to minimize the sin, but to believe God greater than it. On this temptation and its healing, see How to Grow in Trust and Humility, Trust: Changing How You See Your Sins.

The false peace that never converts

The opposite pitfall is more discreet and more widespread: a surface contrition that vaguely regrets without changing anything. One accuses oneself of one's sins, receives absolution, and immediately returns to the same occasions, the same habits, having broken nothing. This is the "lip" contrition denounced by the spiritual masters: lips that speak regret, a will that does not will it. Its sign is the absence of resolve: where true contrition decides to flee the near occasion, the false contents itself with words. To grow in contrition is to refuse this cheap peace that absolves without converting.

Holding "between hope and fear"

Between these two abysses, true contrition walks on two feet. Filial fear — horror of sin, awareness of its gravity — preserves it from lukewarmness; hope — certainty of mercy — preserves it from despair. This is the exact balance of the Gregorian definition. The publican of the parable achieves it in one sentence, betraying it on neither side: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (Lk 18:13) — he acknowledges his sin (fear) and begs for mercy (hope), and Jesus declares: "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified"^[19]. To hold both together is precisely to possess contrition.

Here is the practical heart of this article. Contrition being first a gift, we do not manufacture it by willpower; but we can dispose ourselves to receive it, call upon it, sustain it. The spiritual masters have pointed out precise means, repeatable, within everyone's reach.

Asking for contrition as a grace

First means, and the most decisive: since contrition, even imperfect, is "a gift of God, a prompting of the Holy Spirit" (CCC § 1453), we ask for it before producing it. The sinner does not crush his own heart; he begs God to break it. Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947), Servant of God, in volume 1 of the Book of Heaven, the account of her interior life, made it a constant prayer:

"My beloved Jesus, give me true sorrows for my sins so that they may be consumed by grief and contrition for having offended Thee, and may be erased from my soul and from Thy memory. […]" — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 1^[20]

Asking for contrition is already beginning to have it: we beg for a sorrow for sin only because we already detest that sin, at least a little. This request, repeated each day — above all before confession and at the evening examination — gradually draws the grace of a heart ever more sensitive to evil and ever more loving.

Contemplating the Crucified: passing from fear to love

To raise the motive — from attrition toward perfect contrition — the sovereign means is to look at the Cross. As long as we measure sin only by fear of punishment, contrition remains imperfect; when we measure it by the love it crucified, it becomes contrition of charity. Luisa herself recounts it in the story of her confession: Jesus made her feel that, "by a single bad action," she had "offended Him and almost killed Him"^[21]. And Jesus gives her the key: "Thus you will be able to understand the ugliness of sin and the intensity of the sorrow caused to my Heart." Sin, contemplated before the Crucified, ceases to be an abstract fault: it becomes what made a loving Heart suffer. From this contemplation is born the purest sorrow — not "I shall be punished," but "I have wounded the One who loves me." Meditation on the Passion is thus the school par excellence of perfect contrition.

Meditating on the malice of sin and the goodness offended

Contrition feeds on two crossed gazes: upon the ugliness of sin and upon the goodness of God that it offends. The Catechism names the first as the source of attrition ("the consideration of the ugliness of sin," § 1453); the saints join to it the second, which leads to love. Luisa writes it forcefully in the account of her confession:

"If people understood the Goodness of God and the ugliness of sin, they would banish sin completely from the earth. They would be seized with great remorse and contrition for their sins, or they would die." — Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 1^[22]

This double gaze is exactly what the examination of conscience works on, which the Catechism recommends making "in the light of the Word of God"^[23]. Examining one's life is not inventorying failings in order to anguish over them: it is setting one's acts before God's love, so that the distance between the two gives birth to sorrow. A daily examination, brief and peaceful, is the ordinary upkeep of contrition.

Making frequent acts of perfect contrition

Since perfect contrition "obtains forgiveness of mortal sins" even before confession (CCC § 1452), the masters of the spiritual life strongly recommended making frequent acts of it, and not only in the confessional. Saint Alphonsus Liguori, patron of confessors, placed at the conclusion of each station of his Way of the Cross an act of contrition and love wholly ordered to the motive of love^[24]:

"I love Thee, O my Jesus, my love; I love Thee more than myself, and I repent with all my heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again; grant that I may love Thee always, and then do with me what Thou wilt." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, act of contrition and love^[25]

Saint Alphonsus, in his Preparation for Death, takes up the word of Saint Bernardine of Siena: that "at every moment a man can, by an act of contrition or of love, purchase divine grace and eternal glory"^[26]. Making such an act often — on waking, before sleeping, after a fault, in danger — constantly rekindles the loving sorrow for sin and keeps the heart tender. It is the simplest and most powerful exercise for growing in contrition.

Having recourse to the sacrament, where contrition is completed

Contrition does not remain an isolated inward movement: it takes flesh in the sacrament of Penance, where attrition ripens into contrition and absolution seals forgiveness. That is why perfect contrition outside confession always includes the resolve to confess "as soon as possible" (CCC § 1452): it tends of itself toward the sacrament. Confessing regularly is giving contrition its natural place of fulfillment and receiving the grace that purifies it of its remnants of self-love. See How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Make a Good Confession.

Desiring the gift of tears — without confusing it with contrition

Spiritual tradition knows a particular grace, the gift of tears: those peaceful tears that sometimes accompany contrition and prayer. Saint Augustine knew these tears on the day of his conversion, in the garden at Milan, and recounted them in the Confessions^[27]. Saint Peter wept them all his life; tradition reports his cheeks were furrowed by them. Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Ignatius, and so many others received them in abundance. But exact measure is needed: tears are neither contrition nor necessary to it. They are a possible fruit of it, given to some, refused to others for their good. We may therefore desire this gift and ask for it — it keeps the heart tender — without ever judging our contrition by the tears shed. Contrition, as we have seen, is in the will, not in the tear glands. A dry soul that truly detests its sin is more contrite than a moved soul that does not renounce it.

How do we recognize that we are truly growing in contrition? Not by the intensity of tears, but by stable fruits which the saints describe with constancy.

The peace and joy of forgiveness

The first fruit is paradoxical: a sorrow that makes joyful. True contrition does not lock us in sadness; it frees us from it, because it issues in forgiveness. The sinful woman of the Gospel experiences it: she weeps at Jesus' feet, yet goes away "in peace," hearing that unheard-of word:

"Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. […] Your faith has saved you; go in peace!" — Gospel according to Saint Luke 7:47-50^[28]

Such is the penitent's own joy: not the euphoria of one who deems himself innocent, but the deep peace of one who knows himself forgiven. The truer the contrition, the denser the peace that follows, for it rests not on forgetting the fault but on certainty of mercy.

A new heart

Second fruit: contrition obtains what God had promised through Ezekiel — the replacement of the heart of stone with a heart of flesh:

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." — Book of Ezekiel 36:26^[29]

The heart crushed by contrition is not a destroyed heart: it is a heart remade. The grinding of the stone is the condition for the gift of flesh. A soul that grows in contrition becomes little by little more sensitive, more supple, quicker to let itself be touched — a new heart that nothing hardens durably anymore.

Humility and gentleness toward other sinners

Third fruit: whoever knows his own misery stops judging that of others. Contrition begets humility — the Gregorian definition even made it its essence: "humility of spirit." And from this humility is born gentleness: we are lenient toward others' faults in the exact measure in which we have wept over our own. The penitent never climbs onto the judge's seat, because he has too often sat in the dock. See How to Grow in Humility and How to Grow in Gentleness.

The love that grows

Fourth fruit, the highest: contrition makes us love more. This is the great law stated by Christ concerning the sinful woman: "he who is forgiven little, loves little" (Lk 7:47). Forgiveness received converts into love returned; and the more contrition has hollowed out the awareness of what was forgiven, the greater the love that springs from it. That is why the greatest saints were often the greatest penitents: not because they had sinned more, but because they better measured what God's love had preserved them from or raised them out of. Contrition thus rejoins charity, its ultimate end: see How to Grow in Charity.

No doctor has spoken of contrition with more fire than Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). In the Dialogue, the Eternal Father reveals to her that what makes satisfaction for the fault is not first the sufferings endured, but the ardor of desire of a soul that repents and hates sin:

"Satisfaction lies in the ardor of a soul that truly repents and hates sin. Perfect contrition makes satisfaction for the fault and the penalty, not by the sorrow one feels, but by the infinite desire one experiences." — The Eternal Father to Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue^[30]

This page has great practical scope. It shifts contrition's center of gravity: from the quantity of suffering to the quality of desire. Even a small sorrow, animated by an infinite desire to repair the offense done to God, is worth more than abundant tears without love. Catherine specifies where each is born: love, from the knowledge "of my goodness," and contrition, from the knowledge "of oneself and of one's faults"^[31]. Here again are the two crossed gazes mentioned above: it is by seeing oneself before God's goodness that love grows and the heart is crushed with contrition.

We do not grow in a grace by gazing at it as an abstract ideal, but by placing ourselves in the school of those who can obtain it for us. And contrition has a maternal mediatrix.

The Church invokes Mary as "refuge of sinners"^[32]: not that she excuses sin, but that she obtains for sinners the grace to detach themselves from it. Saint Alphonsus, in The Glories of Mary, teaches that she obtains for her devotees sorrow for their sins and the grace of conversion^[33]. Asking Mary for a contrite heart is turning to the one whose heart was, at the foot of the Cross, most united to Christ's sorrow for our sins. Growing in contrition, in the end, is letting her lead us to the Crucified, and learning beside her to weep over sin as one weeps over a wound dealt to love — with a sorrow that does not crush, but heals.

Contrition does not grow by great bursts, but by a small and repeated fidelity. The means studied here can be summed up in a simple program, graded from the most accessible to the most demanding:

How to read this table: none of these exercises is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that turns a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Begin with one or two, hold to them, then add more.

The essential thing is not to aim at contrition in general, but to make, today, the concrete act at hand: this sin to truly detest, this occasion to flee, this gaze to lift toward the Crucified. For contrition is not a mood, but a grace we call upon and exercise. To whoever asks for it with a sincere heart, God never refuses it: He promised not to despise "a broken and crushed heart," and He always keeps His word.

• How to Grow in Penance — the overall virtue of which contrition is the first act, with confession and satisfaction.
• How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Make a Good Confession — the sacrament in which contrition is fulfilled and receives absolution.
• How to Grow in Making Reparation — repairing the wrong caused by sin, the active prolongation of contrition.
• Humility, Trust: Changing How You See Your Sins — how to look at your faults without getting mired in them, between truth and trust.
• How to Grow in Trust and How to Grow in Hope — the two virtues that keep contrition from sliding into despair.
• How to Grow in Humility — the "humility of spirit" which the Gregorian definition places at the very heart of contrition.