Contrition

(Found here)

“Where the sense of sin is not, the spiritual life cannot exist; as the life of holiness grows, the spirit of contrition deepens. It seems strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that contrition deepens in proportion as the soul becomes purer, that is, in proportion as the guilt of sin is removed.

[Contrition] stands, then, at the entrance of the life of devotion and prayer, waiting to receive the soul and lead it onward in the pathway of holiness, and there is no grace that it does not help to form, over whose development it does not preside, and into which it does not impart something of its own stern yet gentle spirit.

If it is to exist at all, it must reign supreme and penetrate everywhere. Many a Christian virtue owes its nameless and undefined grace to the fact that its fiber has been woven by the firm yet gentle hands of contrition. It would not have grown, it never could have lived, but for the strong, tender care of that grace that can produce virtues so strangely unlike itself, so apparently opposite to itself. In a soil, barren if it had not been watered by her tears, those virtues were planted. Beneath the burning sun of temptation that would have scorched them if she had not sheltered them with her shadow, they grew and developed and blossomed, and bore fruit. Who could have ever guessed that the power that unsealed the lips of that shy, reserved person, and enabled him to speak with sympathy and love, was the deep sense of his own sin, and the longing to do something to repair its effects? Who could have guessed that the power that gave strength, determination, and perseverance to that will that never could resist temptation was the very memory of all that it had yielded to in the past, love grieving over its offenses, and restoring the power lost by sin!

Yes, we can little tell the source of the power or the immeasurable strength of the force that sets the long clogged wheels and rusted springs of the spiritual life in motion and produces such a wonderful result; and least of all is that soul in whom this grace is working such wonders, conscious of what is taking place within it. For the strange thing is that while for the penitent contrition is the mother of all virtues, she is herself the outcome of sin, and while weaving the holiest virtues, she sees how stained her hands are and seeks to wash them with her tears.”

~Basil Maturin (from Spiritual Guidelines for Souls Seeking God)