Column from the bulletin of Ascension Sunday May 24, 2020
I’ve spoken of these several times now, but it’s time to actually explain what they are and how they work. An indulgence is not “buying your way into heaven” and anyone who thinks of that way is misunderstanding the whole structure. In short, an indulgence is a way to access and apply God’s grace and mercy to a specific persons’ life. Ultimately, Salvation comes through Christ and all grace comes from Christ. An indulgence is no exception, it is just a formal structure for understanding the many ways that we access the grace he gives.
First, we have to understand that all sin causes two things: guilt and harm. Every sin we commit makes us guilty, leaving us responsible for weakening or destroying our relationship with God. This guilt is solved by forgiveness, which cannot be earned. The grace of forgiveness on the Cross is applied to a soul who sincerely seeks it, usually through sacramental Baptism or Confession. That’s the simple part. The more complex part is that Sin also causes harm to our own human nature, to others around us (the Church), and to the world in general. This damage must be repaired. You could also think of it like a debt that has to be repaid. The metaphor I like to use for this is a kid breaking his neighbor’s window. There is the guilt that comes from mistreating his neighbor. That can be forgiven when the child says he is sorry and the neighbor says “I forgive you.” But, the window is still broken. It is possible for the neighbor to repair the window himself, but it is good for the child to make some effort himself, perhaps by mowing the lawn to earn the money it would cost.
God is like that neighbor. He forgives us when we say we’re sorry, but we still need to fix the window. This is also the reason purgatory exists, to pay that debt, to fix the broken windows in our souls in preparation for heaven. But, we can never pay off that cost on our own. Everything we can do or give was given to us by God, so it’s not really paying the debt if you borrow money from the person you’re paying. But that’s how God likes it. He gives us the gift of life and free will and many good things besides. He wants us to freely offer these things to him, even though they technically already belong to him. When it comes to repairing the damage or paying the debt of sin, he generally wants us to put some effort into it, even though it’s like we’re borrowing his lawnmower, eating his food, and using his money to pay him back. He’s even there next to us pushing the lawnmower along because we’re not strong enough.
This ties into the fact that God likes to have us cooperate in our own salvation. Where indulgences come in is in God’s choice to have us cooperate in the salvation of each other. Christians help other Christians grow in holiness as God likes it to be. He delights in having Christians help to pay the sin-debt of other Christians. This is part of the reason we pray and fast for the conversion of other people – we seek to work off some of their debt – only by God’s grace in the first place! – so that they can be free to accept the grace of conversion. This network of Christians supporting and healing each other – by God’s grace – is part of the Church’s life. The very heart of this is the infinite grace of Jesus Christ on the cross. Our efforts are simply applying that grace to specific times, places, and people. And even that is done with God’s help.
Well, this process of Christians applying Christ’s grace to the debt of sin eventually came to be known as the “treasury of merit.” Again, it’s really God’s grace “on loan,” so to speak, but it is real because God really wants our efforts to count even if they can’t technically earn anything on their own. Anyway, this treasury of merit is something we can “tap into” through indulgences. Acts of prayer, devotion, and faith allow us to draw on the cumulative efforts of the whole Church throughout time to “pay” debts we cannot pay on our own. All of this, every single step, presupposes real faith, hope, and love. It presupposes sincerity and a desire to love God. There are no technicalities that allow an insincere, unfaithful person to “game the system” and get into heaven. A person who tries to “earn” an indulgence without faith or a desire to leave sin behind does not succeed. Selling such things is simply a lie, a scam like fake insurance salesman on the phone. But that doesn’t mean there is no such thing as real insurance and it doesn’t mean there are no such things as indulgences.
In Christ,
-Fr. Albert