What Penitence Is, and the Proof of Pardon

So, to satisfy your wish and your question as briefly and shortly as possible: the full and perfect description of penitence is never again to give way to the sins for which we do penance, or for which our conscience is pricked. And the proof of amends and of pardon is that we have driven the love of those sins out of our hearts. For each one may be sure that he is not yet free from his former sins as long as, while he is devoting himself to amends and tears for them, any image of the sins he has committed, or of others like them, dances before his eyes, and as long as, I will not say a delight in them, but the memory of them, haunts his inmost soul. So one who is watchful to make amends may feel sure that he is free from his sins, and that he has obtained pardon for past faults, when he never feels his heart stirred by the lures and imaginings of those same sins. [a]

So the truest test of penitence and the witness of pardon are found in our own conscience. Even before the day of judgment and of knowledge, while we are still in the flesh, it discloses our acquittal from guilt and reveals the end of amends and the grace of forgiveness. And to put what has been said more pointedly: only then should we believe that the stains of past sins are forgiven us, when the desires for present delights, and the passions as well, have been driven out of our heart.