giveness from on high. It is based entirely on the injury and loss
accruing to self. God is excluded from the whole idea; and yet it is
against Him, and against Him alone, that we have sinned.

The only sorrow acceptable to God is that which springs from a
supernatural motive, the soul excited thereto by divine grace. In this
is our utter helplessness shown; for while it is within our own power
to do wrong, we cannot return to the path of duty and repent without
the help of God. It is by the heavenly gift of grace operating within,
and by the co-operation of the sinner, that the heart is made
contrite. The remembrance of God's infinite love and perfections,
accompanied by earnest prayer for mercy, may rouse the soul to hatred
and grief for its sin, and thus is generated that contrition perfect
through charity for having offended God so sovereignly good, who is to
be loved above all things. For His own sake, and regardless of the
penal consequences of sin, the soul is touched with sincere
compunction. This sorrow, with the implicit or explicit desire to have
recourse to the Sacrament of Penance, reconciles the soul at once with
God, and restores the justifying or habitual grace lost by grievous
sin. "There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,
who walls not according to the flesh, but after the spirit. For the
law of the spirit of life iii Christ Jesus hath delivered me from the
law of sin and of death."[21] The soul about to go before God's
judgment-seat, if it be in deadly sin, and have not at hand the means
for obtaining absolution, is obliged to have this perfect contrition,
or otherwise the sin remains unforgiven.

Again, the soul, contemplating in the sight of God the turpitude of
sin, as made known to us by revelation, or the terror of God's
judgment on those condemned to hell, or the irreparable loss of the
sight of God consequent on sin, may be excited by fear of Him who hath
power to cast into everlasting prison. The soul, awe-stricken by the
painful sight of its own guilt, and by the sense of the judgment of
God, yet hoping for pardon and resolved to sin no more, makes an
initial act of the love of God, and appeals to His goodness for
forgiveness. Though the motive is less perfect, yet "He who desireth
not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live" does
in His exceeding mercy accept this as sufficient for pardon, if there
be added to it the actual reception of the Sacrament