Let the memory of all your sins grieve you, and especially lament and bewail your daily transgressions. Then if time permits, confess to God in the secret depths of your heart all the miseries your passions have caused. Lament and grieve because you are still:
- so worldly,
- so carnal,
- so passionate and unmortified,
- so full of roving lust,
- so careless in guarding the external senses,
- so often occupied in many vain fancies,
- so inclined to exterior things,
- so heedless of what lies within,
- so prone to laughter and dissipation,
- so indisposed to sorrow and tears,
- so inclined to ease and the pleasures of the flesh,
- so cool to austerity and zeal,
- so curious to hear what is new and to see the beautiful,
- so slow to embrace humiliation and dejection,
- so covetous of abundance,
- so niggardly in giving,
- so tenacious in keeping,
- so inconsiderate in speech,
- so reluctant in silence,
- so undisciplined in character,
- so disordered in action,
- so greedy at meals,
- so deaf to the Word of God,
- so prompt to rest,
- so slow to labor,
- so awake to empty conversation,
- so sleepy in sacred services,
- so eager to end them,
- so wandering in your attention,
- so careless in praying,
- so lukewarm in communion,
- so heartless in receiving,
- so quickly distracted,
- so seldom fully recollected,
- so quickly moved to anger,
- so apt to take offense at others,
- so prone to judge,
- so severe in condemning,
- so happy in prosperity,
- so weak in adversity,
- so often making good resolutions and carrying so few of them into action.
When you have confessed and deplored these and other faults with sorrow and great displeasure because of your weakness, be firmly determined to amend your life day by day and to advance in goodness. Then, with complete resignation and with your entire will offer yourself upon the altar of your heart as an everlasting sacrifice to the honor of My name, by entrusting with faith both body and soul to My care…
Thomas á Kempis, Book 4, Chapter 7
