532. VII. True repentance means not only examining what one does in one's life, but also what one intends in one's will to do.

The reason why true repentance means not only examining what one does in one's life, but also what one intends in one's will to do, is that deeds are the product of the understanding and the will. Thought is what makes a person speak and the will is what makes him act, so speech is thought speaking and action is the will acting. Since this is the origin of all speech and action, it follows without a doubt that it is those two which sin when the body does. A person too can repent of the evils he has physically committed, but still think and will evil. This is like cutting down the trunk of a tree that is no good, but leaving its root in the ground; from this the same tree grows up again and spreads itself around. But it is different if the root too is pulled up; and this is what happens in a person when he examines at the same time the intentions present in his will, and rids himself of evils by repentance.

A person can examine what in his will he intends to do by examining his thoughts, for intentions show up in these. He can do so, for instance, if he thinks about, wills and intends revenge, adultery, theft, false witness and longings for these things, as well as blasphemy against God, the holy Word and the church, and so on. In these circumstances, if he concentrates his mind on this and investigates whether he would do these acts if fear of the law or of losing his reputation did not prevent him, if after investigation he thinks that he does not will these acts because they are sins, then he is truly and inwardly penitent. Even more does he do so, when he takes pleasure in those evils and at the same time is free to commit them, but still he desists and abstains. If he does this repeatedly, he finds the pleasures he gets from those evils become with repetition unpleasant to him, and he ends by consigning them to hell. This is what is meant by the Lord's words:

If anyone wants to find his soul, he will lose it, and if anyone loses his soul for my sake, he will find it, Matthew 10:39.

A person who rids himself of the evils in his will by this kind of repentance is like the man who at the right time uproots from his field the tares sown by the devil, so that the seeds planted by the Lord God the Saviour find the ground unencumbered and grow into a crop (Matthew 13:24-30).