Pope Francis going to Confession

When we go to confession, we go first of all to recognize that we are sinners and no one of us gets beyond that basic fact–that we are sinners even though saved. The remarkable thing in the testimony and history of the saints is that the more one grows in his experience of the love of Christ, the more he realizes how much this love is absent in himself. He is drawn to the sacrament of penance out of his life experience; not from some external “you ought to” or “you should,” but because it becomes more and more a need. There is a hunger for it which cannot be satisfied by anything less than being plunged into this mystery of Christ. ~Fr. Edward J. Farrell, Prayer Is A Hunger