Why go to confession?

In the combox on Fr Tim's blog, one Fr Seán Coyle wrote the following note about those who say that they will not go to confession because they always confess the same things.

Pope Benedict in October 2005 to 100,000 at the annual audience for children who have recently made their First Holy Communion: One girl asked the Pope why she must go to confession before receiving Communion, if our sins are always the same.

Smiling, the Holy Father answered: "It is true that our sins are always the same. Yet do we not clean our house, our room, at least once a week, though the dirt is always the same? If we do not, we run the risk of the dirt accumulating, though we may not see it.”

“The same”, he said, “is true of our souls. If we never confess, our souls are overlooked. I may be pleased with myself, yet I do not understand that I have to improve constantly in order to progress. Confession helps us to have a more open conscience and thus to mature in a spiritual and human way."

A priest-friend of mine once asked a mechanic in Ireland why he should bother washing his car, since it would get dirty again. The mechanic responded, "Dont you wash your face every morning?"