This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from representing any spiritual fact.  If we are seeking any serious and fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along the Way of the Cross.  To follow His example means to follow His experience, to treat life as He treated it.  The content of our lives is quite different, but the treatment of the given fact must be essentially the same.  We need the same repulse of temptation, the same quiet disregard of the appeals of the world, whether it offer the alleviation of difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as the reward of our allegiance.  And we, sinners in so manifold ways, need what our Lord did not need, repulsion from our sins as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness.

My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be deficient in the first step in repentance—­contrition.  As we follow the Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering for us; and we feel that the starting point of our repentance must lie in our success in making that a personal matter.  In our self examination, in our approach to the sacrament of penance, we are compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in fact sorry for my sins?  It surely is not enough that we fear the results of sin, or that we are ashamed at our failure.  This really is not repentance but a sort of pride.  There must, I feel, be sorrow after a godly sort.  That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort of sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in love.  I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must find in myself love giving itself to Him.  To my forgiveness it is not enough that God loves me.  I know that He loves me and will love me to the end, whether I repent or not; but the possibility of forgiveness lies in my love of Him, whether it takes such hold on me as actually to stimulate me to forsake sin.  I shall never really forsake sin through shame or fear; one gets used to those emotions after a little and disregards them.  But one does not get used to love; it grows to be an increasing force in life, and so masters us as to draw us away from sin.

Contrition then will be the offspring of love.  It will be born when we follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand that He is going out for us.  Then we want to get as near Him as possible:  we want to take His Hand and go by His side.  We want to stand by Him in His trial and share His condemnation.  We want constantly to tell Him how sorry we are that we have brought Him here.  We shall not be content that He feel all the pain.  We are convinced that we ought to share in the pain as we share in the results of the Passion.  When we have achieved this point of view we shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His forgiveness needs, it may be, much more care than we have hitherto bestowed upon it.  We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we begin to see how much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the confessional counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to have made sure that we are ready to receive it.  We kneel down, therefore, and look at our crucifix, and say:  “This hast Thou done for me,” and make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of Jesus.  We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our relation to Him.