Do you remember that little Confession Booklet I made for my daughter in the fall? It’s been looking a little dog-eared lately. So I decided to make her a real printed version. Now it’s available on Amazon.

It’s just a tiny little booklet, but the art work is beautiful. (Thank you, internet and public domain!) I really do believe that beautiful art can draw us into prayer… yes, in the right environment, it can even do so with  fidgety children!

Keep in mind that this little booklet does not contain everything children need to know about confession. You’ll want to give your child a much more in-depth preparation before his/her first confession.

A Little Book About Confession for Children and Preparing to Receive Jesus can help with that.

But once your child is properly prepared, this little book can serve as a straight-forward, handy little guide. More importantly, it can help your childen give heart-felt confessions, ones filled with true sorrow and repentance. If you let your children make little marks in the book on the examination of conscience, they can then focus on feeling sorrow for their sins rather than trying to remember the sins they need to confess.

The original booklet is still available for you to download and print for free here.

Or purchase a copy from Amazon, here.

It’s important to bring your kids to frequent and regular confession.  We all know how busy life gets… so schedule it in on your calendar. Once going to confession becomes habitual, don’t let them just go through the motions. Help them to feel true and deep remorse for their sins. Without true contrition, the sacrament of Confession is meaningless:

 It is said that many confess, and few are converted. I believe it is so, my children, because few confess with tears of repentance. – St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars

True contrition, however, opens wide the floodgates of purifying grace and is the beginning of real conversion.

Confession – the more often it is used and the more carefully it is made as to both lesser and greater sins – conveys the soul increasingly forward and is so pleasing to God that it leads the soul to God’s very heart.
—Revelations of St. Bridget

So don’t just bring your children to confession. Help them to prepare well and to be truly sorry for their sins.