December 29, 2024 - Pastor Message
January 21, 2025JUBILEE 2025 INDULGENCES
JUBILEE 2025
INDULGENCES
“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Amen I say to you: Whatsoever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you: If two of you agree on earth about anything whatsoever they will ask for, it will be done for them by my Father, who is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst” (Matthew 18:18-20).
This weekend, we join the Church around the world in celebrating the feast of the Holy Family. Our diocese also kicks off the Holy Year of Jubilee 2025, joining the Church around the world in a year-long celebration of God’s mercy in Christ Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, protected and nurtured by St. Joseph, and poured out through his death and resurrection. Christ, the living water and wellspring of all mercy, continues to pour his saving love out for all who would receive it in and through the ministry of the Church, to whom he entrusted the power to bind and to loose from the bondage of sin both in heaven and on earth. This jubilee year provides a uniquely blessed opportunity for the Church to exercise her ministry of mercy by offering a plenary indulgence to all those who seek it through their participation in the jubilee.
To understand what an indulgence is, we need to understand the awful power of sin and its consequences. Sin wounds and mars our relationship with God, the source of life, both natural and divine (grace). When our sin is serious, it can even cut us off completely from the life God offers us. God freely forgives us our sins and restores us to his life when we seek his mercy with true faith and contrition, particularly through the sacrament of penance and reconciliation, but the power our sin has over us and the wounds it has caused can still hinder our progress in the spiritual life and keep us from fully embracing God. We need not only the emergency healing of the grace of the sacrament but the long-term purification we call penance.
That’s where indulgences come in. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines an indulgence as a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the sanctifications of Christ and the saints” (1471). Temporal punishment does not mean some external pain inflicted by God from outside but rather the internal sorrow we feel from the harm caused by our sin and a burning desire to be rid of it forever, leaving nothing standing between us and God, who is all-good and worthy of all our love. Like fire that purifies precious metal, this internal “punishment” purifies our hearts so we can obtain our ultimate desire, to be fully one with God. This is the goal of penance, both individual and communal, which, when done by the Church on someone’s behalf, is called an indulgence. Tune in next week for a fuller look at indulgences and the conditions necessary to receive the indulgence offered to us in Jubilee 2025.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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