But we are blessed because God forgives repentant hearts. When we turn away from sin and turn back to God, we will always find Him waiting with wide open arms.
The Act of Contrition prayer helps us to express repentance for our sins and open our hearts to God's forgiveness. It is a simple little prayer that nearly every Catholic knows and says, but when we take time to study it, we realize its depth and beauty.
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins because of Your just punishments, but most of all because they offend You, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Your grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.
Let's take a close look at this delightful and useful little prayer.
1. O my God – When we begin a prayer with these three little words, we are claiming God as our own. We are saying that we have a personal relationship with Him. We are not, of course, asserting that we can control God or that we somehow possess Him. Quite the opposite is true. When we claim God, we submit to His will and His loving control of our lives, and we allow Him to possess us.
2. I am heartily sorry – Our repentance must come from our hearts. The heart is the very center of a human being, the place in which we encounter God, the place in which we grasp the deepest truths, the place in which we choose God with our whole being. Our sorrow for sin must rise up from that deep-down core. That sorrow, being sorry, means acknowledging what we do wrong and sincerely regretting and even abhorring our sins.
3. for having offended You – Sin is an offense against God. Period. Sin hurts God. It rebels against love, against truth, against beauty, against goodness, against God Himself in the depths of His being. Sin damages our relationship with God (venial sin) or, worse, breaks our relationship with God (mortal sin). Sin is serious business.
4. I detest all my sins – Sin is the most horrific thing that can ever happen. It is completely detestable, abhorrent, despicable, disgusting, odious, and heinous. There is no other way to describe it. We must hate our sins.
5. because of Your just punishments – We hate our sins because we know that God punishes us for them. God is perfectly just. He gives to each person what is due based on his or her actions. When we sin, we deserve punishment because we have done wrong. God does not punish out of vengeance, however. He is a good Father, Who punishes His children in order to correct them, to make them see the error of their ways, and to teach them how to follow the right path.
6. but most of all because they offend You – Even though we rightly fear God's punishments, we detest our sins even more because they offend God. We should despise anything that hurts and angers our loving God, Who only wants what is best for us, and sin hurts and angers God more than anything else, for it is a denial and a rejection of His great love.
7. my God – Once again, we acknowledge God as our God. We long for relationship with Him, that relationship that sin damages or destroys. With these little words, we express our desire to repair and restore that relationship.
8. Who art all-good – Everything God is and everything He does is good. He cannot be otherwise. He is perfect in every single way.
9. and deserving of all my love – There is no one and no thing more deserving of love than God. Besides being all-good, God is all-loving all-beautiful, all-wise, all-true, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. There is no deficiency in God. He is perfection itself. How can we not love Him? Yet sin directly opposes love.
10. I firmly resolve with the help of Your grace to sin no more – To avoid sin, we need to make a strong commitment. But we can't do it alone. We would never succeed that way. We are too fragile and weak; we are too prone to falling. So God gives us His grace to help us conquer sin. We cooperate with that grace by opening our hearts to receive it and then calling upon it and acting in it in every situation when we are faced with a choice to sin or not.
11. and to avoid the near occasion of sin – Along with steering clear of sin, we must also steer clear of situations that tend to lead to sin. We should not take risks about offending God. If we know that particular places, people, circumstances, or objects prod us in the direction of sin, then we have the obligation to avoid those places, people, circumstances, and objects. We must also understand, of course, that no person or thing can force us to sin. Sin is always a free choice. When we sin, we know that our action, word, thought, or omission is wrong, but we do it anyway. That being said, we must be aware of sticky, potentially-sinful situations and stay away from them.
12. Amen – With this little word, we give our firm assent to everything we have just prayed, once again declaring repentance for our sins and our vow not to sin again.
Let us pray once more:
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins because of Your just punishments, but most of all because they offend You, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Your grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.
