If time is a river then we shall all meet death by water. Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough. Galileo has had his pardon but not Sappho. Galileo is no longer a heretic but Sappho is still a Sapphist. Unusual for a Catholic to feel shame.
Guilt is our ticket.
Guilt to confess, guilt to expiate, guilt, good riddance and gone. The priest understands that. Shame comes from an older and different moral sense, where the wrong-doer does not fear punishment, either in this world or the next, but fears that shrinking up of self, the loss that any small, mean, dirty or stupid act, charges to the soul. If I cheat another, I cheat myself out of the person that I could be. If I wound another, I will eventually find the cut recalled to my own heart.