AR 531 - Actual Repentance

AR 531 [5, 6]

Actual repentance is to examine oneself,
to recognize and acknowledge one's sins,
to make oneself guilty of them,
to confess them before the Lord,
to implore His aid and power in resisting them,
and so to refrain from them and lead a new life,
doing all this as though of oneself.
Do this once or twice a year
when you go to Holy Communion;
and afterward,
when the sins of which
you have made yourself guilty recur,
say to yourselves,
'We refuse to do them because
they are sins against God.'
That is actual repentance.

. . . with someone who repents actually.
His evils that he recognizes and acknowledges,
he calls sins,
and therefore he begins to refrain from them
and to be averse to them,
and to feel the delight he had felt in them
as undelightful.
Moreover, to the extent that he does this,
to the same extent he sees and loves goods,
and finally feels delight in them,
a delight which is one of heaven.
In a word,
to the extent someone casts the devil behind him,
to the same extent he is adopted by the Lord
and taught, led, withheld from evils by Him
and kept in goods.
This is the way,
the only way,
from hell to heaven.