Everything has to be related, without false shame

Be very sincere. Don’t make any concession to yourself without mentioning it. You must say everything. Look, if you don’t say everything, things become complicated and what began as nothing ends up being a big thing. Remember the tale of the gypsy who went to confession and said, “Father, I accuse myself of stealing a halter... and behind that there was a mule, and then another halter and another mule,” and so on, up to twenty. My children, the same can happen in many other things. As soon as we give in to the halter, everything else follows, a whole string of things, things that make us ashamed.

When I was little, there were two things that I disliked a lot: kissing my mother’s lady friends when they came to visit and putting on new suits. I would hide under the bed. Then my mother would say to me affectionately, “Josemaría, only be ashamed to sin.” Many years later I realised what a depth of meaning these words contained. The devil takes away our shame to make us go the wrong way, and then he gives it back to us so that we don’t tell our errors, perhaps the same errors which others brag about sitting around a table in a café, and even exaggerating them.