(deep voice) And take one!
Take two.
(lighter voice) Take two, they're small.
(deep voice) Take two, they're small.
(Heh) OK.
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So as you probably know, we're in the Year of Mercy,
the year that Pope Francis declared to be the Jubilee Year of Mercy.
Now, along with that Year of Mercy, there are attached what we call indulgences.
You say, "Wait, wait, wait. Indulgences. I know that word.
That seems like a bad word.
I don't think we believe in indulgences as Catholics anymore. Is that correct, Father?"
And I say, "Great question. No, we do still believe in indulgences."
You say, "Wait, I thought that the indulgences were the reason why the Reformation happened,
because indulgences [are] so bad that
that's why Martin Luther had to leave the Catholic Church,
this kind of thing.
People were selling and buying indulgences
and that was the worst thing in the world."
Well, A) indulgences are not bad, they're good.
B) the Church never taught that indulgences were to be bought or sold.
We'll get back to that at the end of this.
But the Church never taught that indulgences were to be bought or sold.
In fact, that's called the sin of simony.
Sy-mony? Sim-ony?
Where it's buying or selling of spiritual things.
That's a sin.
Simon the magician tried to do it in the Acts of the Apostles and he died.
He died because of that so we don't want to do that.
Indulgences are something different.
Indulgences are simply God's grace being offered for free,
because God's grace is always free.
Let's stop. What's an indulgence?
Glad you asked.
An indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment due to sin.
OK, I'll say that again.
An indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment due to sin.
Now here's how I like to phrase it.
I like to say change that one word, punishment, for another word.
And the reason I like to do that is because it's true, it's temporal punishment
but at the same time, I think sometimes when we think of punishment,
we think of arbitrary judges who don't give fair punishment but give arbitrary punishments.
So let's replace the word "punishment" with the word "consequence".
So an indulgence is the remission or taking away of temporal consequences due to sin.
Now we know, we all know, right, we know that sin has consequences,
but sin has two different kinds of consequences.
There is the eternal consequence of sin which is separation from God forever—so, hell—
and there's also the temporary or temporal consequence due to sin.
So when it came to the eternal consequence due to sin,
Jesus Christ himself paid that price.
He suffered the eternal consequence for our sins.
He made it possible for us to have complete access to the Father,
to have new life in him, and to go to heaven.
So Jesus Christ paid the price for our eternal consequence due to sin.
But we know that there's this other consequence,
the temporal or temporary consequence due to sin.
Now, this is not only biblical, this is also like common sensical.
We all know this. We've all experienced this,
where, you know, we said yes to sin at one point
and it was kind of tough to say yes to that, we felt really bad about it.
But after we did, after we said yes, there was a consequence.
Even after we were forgiven for that sin, we still were wounded.
It was easier to say yes to the sin in the future.
It was harder to say no to the sin in the future.
That's part of the temporary consequence due to sin.
It's like Bishop Barron calls "spiritual physics".
So what's an indulgence?
An indulgence is given to us by the Church.
Again, this is, God gave his grace to the Church to be an instrument of distributing his grace.
So the Church says this:
We know that you experience this temporal consequence due to sin.
We know you experience the eternal salvation because of Jesus,
but we know that you're wounded, that there's consequences for our sins.
So here's what we want to do:
You can't heal yourself
so we're going to make it possible for you to have as much access to God's grace as possible.
So if you do these things, these practices, these spiritual practices,
what you're doing is you're opening yourself up to healing
from the eternal—or, sorry—temporal consequence due to sin.
It's like this: imagine that I tore my shoulder,
I had like a torn rotator cuff or something like this.
Now, no matter how hard I worked,
I couldn't fully heal that shoulder.
So what do I need?
I need a surgeon, someone from outside to come in and heal that.
So that's like God taking care of the eternal consequence.
But at the same time, if you've ever had surgery, you know this.
You know you come out of surgery and you're not like, "Oh, I feel all better, it's great."
You need to do what? You need to do physical therapy.
Now you've been healed already.
The eternal consequence of your torn shoulder has been healed
but now you have a temporary consequence
and what you need to do is—you still experience weakness, you still experience some woundedness.
It's whole again, but it's not strong yet.
That's the temporary consequence due to a torn shoulder.
So what do you do?
You go to a physical therapist and they say, "Do these exercises."
When you do these exercises, they're not magic,
what they do is they strengthen your shoulder.
Similarly, indulgences, they're not magic,
but when you do them, they strengthen your soul. They strengthen your relationship with the Lord.
And so typically, an indulgence—a partial indulgence or a full indulgence
or the technical word is "plenary indulgence"—has four [or] five things with it.
What these four [or] five exercises that you could do
just like a PT would give you exercises for your shoulder,
the Church gives you exercises for your soul.
One, pray for the pope. Why?
Because that represents our unity with the Church.
Number two, go to confession. Why?
Because of course we need to have access to God's grace,
we need to—not just have access, we have access—we need to USE that access to God's grace.
We need to allow him to heal us.
Number three, go to Communion.
Receive Holy Communion within a certain number of days of the fourth action, the fourth thing you could do.
Now the fourth thing is like "the thing you do" for the indulgence.
You could either go on a pilgrimage and pray, or you could do some good act of service,
or you could deny yourself something— like, you know, some kind of fasting, some kind of penance—
or you could do some kind of good work of charity.
Basically, every indulgence, the action there,
can be broken down into works of prayer or fasting or almsgiving.
So, "Pray this."
You know, go into a chapel and pray the Stations of the Cross on a Friday during Lent—that's an indulgence.
Or fasting. Fast in this particular way and that's an indulgence.
Or almsgiving. Do this good act of service and that'll be an indulgence.
Because why?
Because those things are meant to heal our hearts
that have been wounded because of sin, the temporal consequence due to sin.
Now here's the last thing.
"But I thought the Church sold indulgences."
Well, that would be an easy mistake
that not only non-Catholics but even Catholic priests when they were probably
proclaiming the goodness of God's grace
and their access to his abundance of grace in indulgences, because of this.
So you could pray, you could fast, you could give alms.
Giving alms is a good thing.
So, helping people out.
Now who is good to help? Well it's good to help the Church.
The Church has a great mission, the Church has a great role in the world
and so, if you give alms to the Church—in fact, you know we're trying to build this beautiful church
so God can be worshipped in Rome called St. Peter's—
and so how about this:
if you donate, give alms, to the Church to the building of St. Peter's, that's an indulgence.
Now do you see how that communication of something like that
could be misinterpreted as "we're selling you God's grace"?
We're selling you an indulgence.
It totally could be misinterpreted as that.
Actually, it could even be misspoken from a bishop or from a priest at that time
as they're saying like, "Just pay this much money and you'll get this much grace."
That would be them miscommunicating or other people misinterpreting.
But the Church ultimately never sold indulgences
any more than you could buy an indulgence by praying or buy an indulgence by fasting.
Giving alms is just another good work that Jesus Christ recommends. Why?
Not because he needs it, because it's good for our souls.
The fifth thing was this: to not have any attachment to sin.
That's when people are like, "Oh! Oh, that's lame. How can I not have any attachment to sin?"
Well, you know, when you continue to grow and walk with the Lord
and you conform your will to his will, you get less and less attached to sin.
That's not only one of the consequences of indulgences,
it's also one of the tools, one of the instruments that give indulgences—
basically, another word for God's grace given to us through the Church—their power.
There's always consequences due to sin.
There's an eternal consequence and there's a temporary consequence.
If you've gone to confession, if you've been baptized,
that eternal consequence has been taken care of by the Lord.
But you probably find yourself weak, you probably find yourself still in need of growth and of strength
and that's where indulgences come in.
These spiritual exercises by which the Lord in his grace
strengthens us when we say yes and cooperate with him.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.
Does that make sense?
Hope it does. If not,
you should ask someone about it.
Don't ask me about it because that's all I know
but ask someone about else about it
because that would be probably helpful.
You can ask me. You can ask me. You can ask me.
Ask me!
No, no. Well ... whatever.
Go to Catholic Answers—no!
Go to Ascension Presents!
No! Go to Ascension Press.