Mercy, my God, by your goodness, by your immense compassion erase my guilt. Wash away my crime, cleanse me from my sin4.
Many times throughout our lives we have asked for forgiveness, and many times the Lord has forgiven us. At the end of each day, when we take stock of our deeds, we could say: Mercy, O God.... Each one of us knows how much we need divine mercy.
Thus we go to Confession: to ask for absolution for our faults as an alms that we are far from deserving. But we go with confidence, trusting not in our merits, but in His mercy, which is eternal and infinite, always ready to forgive: Lord, You do not despise a broken and humiliated heart5. Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.
He only asks us to acknowledge our faults with humility and simplicity, to recognize our debt. That is why we go to Confession, first of all, to be forgiven by the one who stands in God's place and takes his place. Not so much to be understood, to be encouraged. We go to ask for forgiveness.
For this reason, the accusation of sins does not consist in a simple declaration of them, because it is not a historical account of one's faults, but a true accusation of them: I accuse myself of.... It is, at the same time, a painful accusation of something that we wish had never happened, and in which there is no room for apologies with which to conceal one's faults or to diminish personal responsibility. Lord..., by your immense compassion, erase my guilt; wash away my crime, cleanse me of my sin.
St. Josemaría Escrivá, with simple and practical criteria, advised that Confession should be concise, concrete, clear and complete.
Confession should be concise, with not too many words: just the words needed to say with humility what has been done or omitted, without unnecessary length, without embellishment. The abundance of words denotes, at times, the desire, unconscious or not, to flee from direct and full sincerity; to avoid this, it is necessary to make a good examination of conscience.