Of all the gifts Christ entrusted to His Church, the saints singled out one they gladly called the “second baptism”: confession. But they did not content themselves with recommending it to great sinners in danger of damnation. Almost all of them, from the Desert Fathers to modern mystics, made frequent and regular confession — even without grave fault — one of the pillars of the interior life. Where many Christians see only a painful obligation to be discharged once a year, the saints saw a remedy not to be left at the back of the cupboard, a spring to be drawn from often.
This article gathers their own voice on this precise point: not the spirit of conversion in general — treated in What the Saints Say About Penance —, nor the interior sorrow for sin — the subject of What the Saints Say About Contrition —, nor the scriptural case for the sacrament — set out in Does the Bible Teach Confession? —, but indeed the question posed by the title: why confess regularly, and how? Here one will hear the Fathers, the doctors, the Magisterium, and the great saints of the confessional agree on a shared conviction: regular confession is not a luxury for the scrupulous; it is the ordinary hygiene of a soul that wants to love God.
Three emphases recur constantly under their pens, and never contradict one another: confession is first an act of mercy — God finds in it, says the Curé of Ars, “His greatest pleasure”[1]; it is a regular remedy — according to a reported saying of Padre Pio, the soul needs to be dusted every week like a room kept locked[2]; and it is a school of truth — Francis de Sales banishes from it mechanical routine as much as servile fear. Here is this florilegium.
Why Do the Saints Recommend Confessing Often?
“Whose Sins You Forgive”: A Sacrament, Not an Optional Devotion
For the saints, confession is not a pious invention but a sacrament instituted by Christ Himself, on Easter evening, when He breathes upon the Apostles:
“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you retain, they are retained.” — The Risen Jesus, Gospel according to Saint John 20:22-23[3]
From this gift, the whole tradition draws the conviction that forgiveness of sins committed after baptism ordinarily passes through the ministry of the Church. Saint James already takes it as established when he writes to the first communities: “Confess your sins to one another”[4]. And Saint John reminds us that no Christian, however advanced, can claim to be without sin: “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves […]. If we acknowledge our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us”[5]. The Catechism sums up this faith in a dense formula: through this sacrament, penitents “obtain from God’s mercy forgiveness for the offense committed against Him, and are at the same time reconciled with the Church”[6].
That is why the saints never treated confession as a mere psychological exercise in self-review. It is, in their eyes, the channel of a real grace. The Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta receives, in this same line, an interior word of great clarity on the sacrament’s own efficacy:
“Sin wounds the soul and gives it death. The sacrament of confession gives it life again, heals its wounds, restores vigor to its virtues — more or less, according to its dispositions. This is how this sacrament works.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 3 (January 5, 1900)[7]
The Minimum Precept and the Invitation to More
The Church distinguishes what she commands from what she recommends. The precept is minimal and concerns only grave faults: “Every faithful who has reached the age of discretion is bound faithfully to confess grave sins at least once a year”[8]. But the saints never wanted to stop at this floor. The obligatory minimum was never, for them, the proposed ideal: love is not measured by what it is strictly bound to do.
Here enters the great recommendation of regular confession, which also concerns venial faults, and which is the subject of the present article. The Catechism formulates it with remarkable precision:
“Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church. Indeed, the regular confession of our venial sins helps us to form our conscience, to struggle against our evil inclinations, to let ourselves be healed by Christ, and to progress in the life of the Spirit. By receiving more frequently through this sacrament the gift of the Father’s mercy, we are spurred to be merciful ourselves as He is.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1458[9]
The saints’ entire teaching on regular confession lies in germ in this paragraph: it is not an obligation, it is a path. One does not confess often because one is constrained to do so, but because one wants to be healed more often, formed more surely, made more merciful.
A Remedy It Would Be Madness to Leave Unused
The saints insist on a point of spiritual common sense: to possess a sovereign remedy and not use it would be madness. Saint Francis de Sales says it bluntly to Philothea, the soul he guides:
“Alas! Would it not be the height of madness to let ourselves die of spiritual death, when we have in our hands so sovereign a remedy to heal us?” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19[10]
The image of remedy and physician runs through the whole tradition. Long before theology systematized the effects of the sacrament, Saint John Chrysostom was already urging his faithful at Antioch not to flee the avowal of their faults, but to approach God as one approaches a healer, without paralyzing shame:
“Lay bare your conscience in God’s presence, show Him your wounds and beg Him for remedies; address Him not as a censor, but as a physician. […] Speak then, it is to your advantage. Speak, so that, laying down all your sins there, you may withdraw pure and delivered from your faults.” — Saint John Chrysostom[11]
This intuition — confession as medicine of the soul, not as tribunal of fear — governs all the saints will say about regular confession. One does not often visit a judge; one gladly returns to the physician who heals.
The Voice of the Magisterium on Frequent Confession
The Council of Trent: The Sacrament of Forgiveness Defined
Faced with the Protestant reformers who denied the necessity of sacramental avowal, the Council of Trent solemnly defined, in its 14th session (November 25, 1551), the Catholic doctrine of the sacrament of penance. There it teaches that confession of grave sins — according to their kind and their number — is an integral part of the sacrament instituted by Christ, and is necessary for the salvation of those who have sinned after baptism[12]. The council takes up the patristic image of the “second plank after shipwreck,” already dear to Saint Jerome: if baptism is the ship, penance is the plank held out to the one shipwrecked by sin.
Trent does not deal directly with the frequency of confession, but it lays its foundation: if the sacrament is a real channel of mercy and grace, then receiving it often is never without fruit. That is precisely the consequence the pontifical magisterium would draw, four centuries later.
Pius XII and the Eight Fruits of Frequent Confession
In the 20th century, certain currents claimed it was useless, even unhealthy, to confess merely venial sins. Pope Pius XII answers firmly in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), explicitly defending “the pious practice of frequent confession” introduced, he says, “under the impulse of the Holy Spirit.” He lists its fruits with wholly pedagogical precision:
“Frequent confession […] increases true self-knowledge, fosters Christian humility, tends to uproot bad habits, combats spiritual negligence and tepidity, purifies the conscience, strengthens the will, lends itself to spiritual direction, and, by the sacrament’s own effect, increases grace.” — Pius XII, encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, § 88[13]
This sentence has become the magisterial charter of regular confession. It deserves to be unfolded, for each of its members corresponds to an experience the saints had lived before any pope formulated it:
| Fruit according to Pius XII | What regular confession brings about |
|---|---|
| Self-knowledge | Repeated examination unmasks the faults habit had made invisible |
| Christian humility | Accusing oneself aloud breaks pride and self-illusion |
| Uprooting of bad habits | Regular return keeps venial defects from becoming entrenched |
| Combat against tepidity | The grace of the sacrament reawakens slumbering fervor |
| Purification of conscience | The soul stays clean, without letting stains accumulate |
| Strengthening of the will | Absolution gives “great strength to avoid sin in the future” (Francis de Sales) |
| Openness to spiritual direction | The confessor knows the soul and can guide it (cf. What the Saints Say About Spiritual Direction) |
| Increase of grace | Ex opere operato, the sacrament increases divine life in the soul |
Pius XII here only gathers into eight words what twenty centuries of holiness had practiced. The sacrament, received regularly, does not merely erase the past: it builds the future.
The Voice of the Doctors: Saint Francis de Sales
“Go to Confession Every Eight Days”
No doctor gave a more precise — and more moderate — rule on the frequency of confession than Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church. In his masterpiece, the Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), he proposes to every soul eager to progress a weekly rhythm:
“Go to confession humbly and devoutly every eight days, and always, if possible, when you receive Communion, even if you have no mortal sin on your conscience; for by confession you will receive not only absolution from the venial sins you confess, but also great strength to avoid them in the future, great light to discern them well, and abundant grace to repair all the harm they have caused you.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19[14]
Three benefits here go beyond mere absolution: strength no longer to fall back, light better to discern one’s faults, restoring grace. The saint adds a remark that sums up his pedagogy: by this single act of confession, “you will practice the virtues of humility, obedience, simplicity, and charity, so that by this one action you will practice more virtues than by any other”[15]. Regular confession is therefore not only a cleansing: it is itself an exercise of virtue.
Neither Mechanical Routine Nor Vague Accusations
Francis de Sales would yet be betrayed if one retained from him only frequency, without quality. The same chapter warns against two pitfalls that ruin regular confession from within. The first is routine without resolve to amend:
“Many, confessing venial sins out of habit and making them as it were the obligatory seasoning of all their confessions, without ever thinking of amending them, remain burdened with them all their lives, and lose by this means many spiritual goods and profits.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19[16]
The warning is formidably lucid: one can confess often and never amend, because one recites one’s faults like a formula without truly wanting to be rid of them. “It is an abuse,” concludes the saint, “to confess any kind of sin, whether mortal or venial, without wanting to be delivered from it, since confession was instituted only for that.”
The second pitfall is vague accusation, which teaches the confessor nothing and commits the penitent to nothing:
“Cut out from your confession those superfluous accusations that many make out of routine: ‘I have not loved God as I should; I have not prayed with as much devotion as I should…’ The reason is that in saying this you say nothing particular that could make known to the confessor the state of your conscience; especially since all the saints in Paradise and all men on earth could say the same things.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19[17]
The lesson is precious for the practice of regular confession: one must accuse oneself “quite simply and naively,” of a concrete, named fault, with a true desire to be corrected of it. That is what distinguishes a living confession from a dead habit.
The Great Saints of the Confessional
Some saints did not only teach confession: they spent their lives in the confessional, pouring out upon crowds the mercy they had received. Their example says more than any treatise.
The Holy Curé of Ars: Mercy Greater Than Sin
Saint John Mary Vianney (1786-1859), parish priest of the small village of Ars, became the patron of all confessors. At the end of his life, he spent up to sixteen or seventeen hours a day in his confessional, where pilgrims flocked from all over France. From this immense experience of forgiveness, he drew a preaching wholly turned toward the goodness of God:
“We cannot understand the goodness God has shown us in instituting this great sacrament of Penance. […] His greatest pleasure is to forgive us. God’s mercy is like a torrent overflowing: it carries hearts away in its passing.” — Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars[18]
The saint noted that shame or fear keeps many souls away from the confessional, whereas it is precisely there that God waits for them to do them good. “Our faults,” he said, “are grains of sand beside the great mountain of God’s mercies.”[19] The Curé of Ars thus teaches the secret of regular confession: one does not go there first to humble oneself, but to let oneself be loved — and it is this received love which, afterwards, hates sin.
Saint Padre Pio: “Dusting the Soul Every Week”
In the 20th century, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968), the famous stigmatized Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo, likewise spent an immense part of his life in the confessional, where endless lines of penitents pressed. According to the testimony of his spiritual children, he recommended to them a weekly confession: even a room kept locked, he explained, gathers dust after a week, and the soul likewise needs to be purified at least every eight days[20].
The image is strikingly apt: even a soul that commits no grave faults gathers, like an uninhabited room, a fine dust of negligences, light words, tepidity — exactly what Francis de Sales called venial sins “out of routine.” Regular confession is the dusting of the soul. According to a maxim widely reported in Padre Pio literature, Padre Pio compared confession to the bath of the soul[21].
The Right Way to Confess Often
There remains the practical question the spiritual masters never ceased to refine: how to frequent the sacrament regularly without falling into scrupulosity, routine, or fear? The saints answer with a surprisingly liberating wisdom.
A Sacrament of Healing, Never a Tribunal of Fear
The first rule is to drive out servile fear. Padre Pio, who yet saw clearly into consciences, tirelessly encouraged his penitents, according to their testimonies, to approach the confessional without fear, for Jesus awaits them there; and he reassured anxious souls afraid of not saying everything: when the good will to confess and the intention to tell everything are present, God’s grace also erases what one cannot remember[22]. The Curé of Ars went the same way: what God expects of the penitent is not perfection of avowal, but humility of return.
The Catechism confirms this tone: the effect of this sacrament is “peace and serenity of conscience, accompanied by lively spiritual consolation”[23]. A regular confession that left the soul more anguished than before would have missed its goal. Where fear closes, mercy opens.
Confession and Direction: One Same Movement
The saints often linked regular confession to spiritual accompaniment. Pius XII already noted it: frequent confession “lends itself to spiritual direction.” A confessor whom one meets regularly ends up knowing the soul, its battles, its progress, and can guide it well beyond the mere avowal of faults. That is the whole meaning developed in What the Saints Say About Spiritual Direction: regular confession is not only an erasing, it opens naturally onto a path led by a sure guide. Francis de Sales himself insisted on choosing a confessor “among a thousand,” able to help the soul with his lights.
When Confession Becomes an Encounter of Love
As the soul is purified, regular confession changes face: from remedy against evil, it becomes an encounter of love. The mystics described this passage. When the soul examines its conscience and regrets its faults, says a word received by Luisa Piccarreta, it already fulfills “the office of Mary Magdalene” — it prepares a balm for Christ’s wounds, and then wants to make reparation through love[24]. Confession is then no longer an accounting of shortcomings, but the gesture of the lover who cannot bear any shadow between herself and the Beloved.
This is the crowning toward which the whole spirituality of union with the Divine Will tends: no longer merely erasing sin, but living in a transparency to God so total that the slightest fault becomes unbearable, and the return to the sacrament is made through love rather than fear. Regular confession is one of the paths leading to this intimacy: by dint of returning to mercy, the soul learns no longer to want to stray from it. That is also the very concrete stake of How to Grow in Regular Confession, which details its practice.
Such is the common wisdom of the saints on regular confession: a sacrament instituted by Christ, strongly recommended by the Church even for light faults, practiced every eight days by the masters of the devout life, lived without routine or fear, and ordered wholly to love — for it is love, and love alone, that ever brings the prodigal child back to the Father’s house.
For Further Reading
- How to Grow in Regular Confession — the practical side: preparing, living, and making a frequent confession fruitful.
- Does the Bible Teach Confession? — the scriptural and patristic case for the sacrament, against the “medieval invention” objection.
- What the Saints Say About Penance — the spirit of conversion (metanoia) of which confession is the sacramental expression.
- What the Saints Say About Contrition — the interior sorrow for sin, the penitent’s first act.
- What the Saints Say About Reparation — satisfaction and expiation, the penitent’s third act.
- What the Saints Say About Spiritual Direction — the accompaniment onto which regular confession naturally opens.
- The Divine Will — the crowning: a life so transparent to God that every shadow becomes unbearable.
Notes and References
Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars (1786-1859), Pensées (presented by Bernard Nodet, Artège ed., 2015, ISBN 978-2-36040-442-1): “His greatest pleasure is to forgive us”, sermon “Sur la miséricorde de Dieu” (first sermon), vol. II, p. 173; “God’s mercy is like a torrent overflowing: it carries hearts away in its passing”, ref. Monnin II, 436 (also Monnin P.O. 1104; Esprit 56); “We cannot understand the goodness God has shown us in instituting this great sacrament of Penance”, ref. Esprit 169 (Monnin 1347). References printed in this collection and verified on site; the sermon “Sur la miséricorde de Dieu” appears in vol. II of the Sermons. Patron of parish priests and confessors (proclaimed by Pius XI, 1929).
1 18Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio, 1887-1968): recommendation of confession at least every eight days, with the comparison of the soul to a room kept locked that gathers dust in a week, a saying reported by his spiritual children, cf. Il Settimanale di Padre Pio (“La confessione frequente consigliata da San Pio”). Primary source not located (wording absent from the published Epistolario, 4 vols.): given here in paraphrase, as a reported saying. Stigmatized Capuchin, canonized in 2002.
2 20Gospel according to Saint John 20:22-23, official liturgical translation (AELF): “Having said this, he breathed on them and said to them: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you retain, they are retained.’” Founding text of the sacrament of penance, on Easter evening.
3Epistle of Saint James 5:16 (AELF): “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” The preceding verse (Jas 5:14-15) already links forgiveness of sins to the ministry of the Church’s “elders.”
4First Epistle of Saint John 1:8-9 (AELF): “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all wrongdoing.”
5Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1422: “Those who approach the sacrament of Penance obtain from God’s mercy forgiveness for the offense committed against Him, and are, at the same time, reconciled with the Church, which they wounded by sinning.” Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
6Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven (Il Libro del Cielo), volume 3, entry of January 5, 1900. Quotation taken from the collection Les paroles de la vie éternelle (index of quotations from saints and mystics); primary source: Centro Studi e Diffusione Luisa Piccarreta / Résiac editions. The Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), of Corato (Apulia), is the mystic of the Divine Will.
7Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1457: “According to the Church’s command, ‘every faithful who has reached the age of discretion is bound faithfully to confess grave sins at least once a year’ (Fourth Lateran Council, 1215; CIC, can. 989).” Minimum precept of yearly avowal of mortal sins.
8Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1458: “Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church […].” Cf. Council of Trent, DS 1680; CIC, can. 988, § 2. Reference Latin text: “Confessio defectuum quotidianorum (peccatorum venialium), quin stricte sit necessaria, enixe ab Ecclesia commendatur.”
9Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), Part II, ch. 19 (“On holy confession”): “Alas! Would it not be the height of madness to let ourselves die of spiritual death, when we have in our hands so sovereign a remedy to heal us?” Doctor of the Church, patron of writers and journalists.
10Saint John Chrysostom (c. 349-407), homily on penance and prayer; quotation taken from Trop occupé pour t’occuper de ta vie? (anthology), éd. du Cerf, 2015, pp. 38-39: “Address Him not as a censor, but as a physician.” Chrysostom urges the humble and frequent avowal of faults, without paralyzing shame.
11Council of Trent, 14th session (November 25, 1551), Doctrine and canons on the sacrament of penance, especially ch. 5 (“On confession”) and canons 6-9: sacramental confession of mortal sins, according to their kind and number, is of divine law and necessary for salvation; the image of the “second plank after shipwreck” taken up. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, Enchiridion symbolorum, nos. 1679-1685 and 1707.
12Pius XII, encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (“The Church, Mystical Body of Jesus Christ”), June 29, 1943, § 88: defense of “the pious practice of frequent confession, introduced by the Church under the impulse of the Holy Spirit.” Official French text on vatican.va. The pope answers currents that deemed confessing venial sins useless.
13Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19: “Go to confession humbly and devoutly every eight days, and always, if possible, when you receive Communion, even if you have no mortal sin on your conscience […].” Text established from the 1619 edition.
14Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19: “You will moreover practice the virtues of humility, obedience, simplicity, and charity, so that by this one action you will practice more virtues than by any other.”
15Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19: “Many, confessing venial sins out of habit and making them as it were the obligatory seasoning of all their confessions, without ever thinking of amending them, remain burdened with them all their lives […].”; and: “It is an abuse to confess any kind of sin, whether mortal or venial, without wanting to be delivered from it, since confession was instituted only for that.”
16Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 19: “Cut out from your confession those superfluous accusations that many make out of routine: ‘I have not loved God as I should; I have not prayed with as much devotion as I should…’ […] you say nothing particular that could make known to the confessor the state of your conscience.” He recommends accusing oneself “quite simply and naively” of a concrete fault.
17Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars, Pensées (presented by Bernard Nodet, Artège ed., 2015): “Our faults are grains of sand beside the great mountain of God’s mercies”, printed ref. Monnin II, 433 (also Monnin P.O. 1104; Esprit 31).
19Saint Pio of Pietrelcina: maxim traditionally attributed to the saint and widely repeated in Padre Pio literature, comparing confession to the bath of the soul. Primary source not located (absent from the published Epistolario): presented here as a reported maxim, without quotation marks.
21Saint Pio of Pietrelcina: encouragement to approach the confessional without fear and assurance that the good will to confess means grace also erases forgotten faults, counsels reported by his penitents and spiritual children. Primary source not located (absent from the published Epistolario): presented here in paraphrase, as reported sayings.
22Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1468, citing the Roman Catechism (II, 5, 18): the sacrament of penance procures for the penitent “peace and serenity of conscience, accompanied by lively spiritual consolation,” restoring him to God’s grace and intimate friendship with Him.
23Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2 (October 28, 1899): “When a soul is convinced it has done evil by offending Me, it already fulfills the office of Mary Magdalene who washed My feet with her tears […]. When the soul begins to examine its conscience, recognizes and regrets the evil it has done, it prepares a bath for My Wounds.” Source: Centro Studi Luisa Piccarreta / Résiac editions.
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