Perfect Act of Contrition (motive of love)

The Catholic Church distinguishes, from the Council of Trent (Session XIV, 1551, ch. IV), between perfect contrition and imperfect contrition (or attrition). Perfect contrition springs from the love of God loved in himself, and not from the fear of punishment nor from the intrinsic ugliness of sin — though these motives also are true and sufficient for sacramental confession. Perfect contrition, according to Trent (ch. IV) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1452), «remits venial faults; it also obtains the forgiveness of mortal sins if it contains the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible». For this reason it is the supreme prayer of the dying person who cannot reach a priest.

My God and my Father, you are infinitely good in yourself, infinitely worthy to be loved above all things, before all reward and before all punishment. By this your goodness, and by no other reason, it grieves me now to have offended you with my sins — all the sins of all my life, known and forgotten, public and hidden.

It is not the fear of hell that first moves me, though I fear it; it is not the shame of the world, though I feel it; it is the love of you, Father, betrayed by me whom you have so often caressed as a son.

For love of you, then, I promise to amend, to flee the proximate occasions of my sins, and to run as soon as possible to the sacrament of Confession, to receive from the hands of the priest, in your person, the absolution that reopens heaven. Through Christ, your Son crucified and risen for me. Amen.