Prayer to the Holy Spirit before Confession

Before making the examination of conscience and approaching the confessor, the Christian asks the Holy Spirit for the light to see his sins as they really are — not as he justifies them, nor as the world excuses them. The Roman Catechism (1566), part II, chapter V, teaches that «no one can worthily confess his sins if he does not know them; and no one can worthily know them without the divine light». This supplication opens the heart to the Paraclete before every confession.

Come, Holy Spirit, Spirit of truth and of light, and illumine the hidden places of my conscience. Show me my sins as you yourself see them: the offences I have committed against God, against my neighbour, and against my own soul — in thought, in word, in deed, and in omission.

Take from me, O Holy Spirit, the blindness of self-love that makes me excuse what has no excuse; take from me the coldness that makes small for me what is grave; take from me the forgetfulness that hides me from myself. Let me see myself as your Son sees me from the height of the Cross.

And, granting me the knowledge of my sins, grant me also true sorrow for having committed them, the firm purpose of not repeating them, and the humility to confess them without evasion, to the priest, in the person of Christ. Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.