Hello, I Father Joe Roche of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

Thank you for joining us as we continue with our year-long journey,

reading the diary of St. Maria Faustina Kavalska, from beginning to end.

Today we take up from where we left off, beginning with Diary Entry Number 111.

When in the midst of these interior torments, I tried to accuse myself in confession of the smallest

trifles.

The priest was surprised that I had not committed graver faults, and he said to me,

if you are as faithful as this to God during these sufferings, this in itself is evidence to me that God is sustaining you, sister, with a special grace, and it is a good thing that you do not understand this.

It is a strange thing, nevertheless, that confessors could neither understand me nor set my mind at peace concerning these matters until I met Father

Andrash and later on Father Sopochko.

A few words about confession and confessors.

I shall speak only of what I have experienced and gone through within my own soul.

There are three things which hinder the soul from drawing prophet from confession

in these exceptional moments. The first thing, when the confessor has little knowledge of

extraordinary ways and shows surprise in a soul, if a soul discloses to him the great mysteries

worked in it by God.

Such surprise frightens a sensitive soul, and it notices that the confessor hesitates to give

his opinion.

And if it does notice this, it will not be set at peace, but will have even more doubts

after confession than before, because it will sense that the confessor is trying to set it

at peace while he himself is uncertain. Or else, as has happened to me, a confessor, unable to penetrate

some of the soul's mysteries, refuses to hear the confession, showing a certain fear when the soul approaches the confessional.

...