Indulgences...

[the_rev]

Well I've had a lot of questions lately and this is to add to them.

I've been reading alot about indulgenceses, and was wondering how do we know we get what it is said we will recieve from that indulgence.

Sorry if this question is blunt...

[Adeodatus]

Dear the_rev,

Your question can be broken down to 2 halves: (1) what do we get from indulgences, and (2) how do we know we get them. (Pardon me for not answering this in fewer words, but I think this is an important topic, much misunderstood!)

To answer (1):

An indulgence is defined as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven".

So it is not a remission of eternal punishment, but of temporal; it is not about getting the sinner forgiven and restoring friendship with God, but about undoing and repairing the damage done to us by our sins.

An indulgence is a reduction of the penance that is necessary to heal us of our spiritual sickness.

On the surface it means that the penance we have to do is less. More deeply it means that the Body of Christ – other Christians, the Church – has come to our help and brought their good works (done under the influence of the Holy Spirit) to our aid. So we have not had to heal ourselves by ourselves; we have been healed by the Spirit moving other members of the Body of Christ to our aid.

In the past the Church 'measured' indulgences by the old system of public penance. An indulgenced prayer might have '10 days' written under it, meaning that the benefit of this prayer said in a good spirit was equivalent to 10 days of fasting under the old system. As long as people knew about the old system, that '10 days' would have automatic meaning for them. The number of days indicated has never meant that many days less in purgatory. That is a ridiculous idea.

Now that the old system is well beyond the experience of anyone living, the Church does not try to quantify indulgences. Whatever benefit is accrued to us by activities inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Church doubles by indulgences.

These are 'partial indulgences', which heal us partially.

A 'plenary indulgence' is one which restores us to full spiritual health.

And in answer to part (2):

We can know that we've received indulgences through the authority of the Church. God has given a certain gift to the Church. He gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter, the power to bind and to loose to Peter and the other apostles. If God has given such a gift to the Church, then the Church can apply the wonderful things Christ and Christ's saints have done to our benefit, and God will say yes to the Church's prayers.

It is not enough to throw a drowning man a rope: he must take hold of it. To benefit from the Church's help, you need in the first place the general intention of receiving indulgences. That's for all indulgences, partial or plenary.

A 'plenary indulgence' also requires more than a 'partial indulgence'. Here, the Church offers her prayers here for those who not only do the particular prayer or good work, but also go to confession, receive communion, pray for the pope’s intentions, and are completely detached from sin, however slight that sin might be.

I guess the only way to know is to trust the Church's authority, given her by Jesus. In some ways it's not different from trusting in someone to pray for you when you've asked them to. Here the Church is like that friend, but is guaranteed to have already prayed for you to help heal you.