Indulgences

Fr. Vojtěch Kodet, O.Carm.

This year of the great jubilee of the Incarnation, the Carmelite Publishing House is preparing to publish a small book titled "The Great Jubilee with Fr. Vojtěch Kodet" as part of the editorial series "Author – Theme". It contains forty meditations by Father Vojtěch on important topics related to the jubilee and is intended to serve as a guide for a more participative celebration of the great jubilee.

We have selected a few texts for the readers of Carmel that relate to a historically burdened topic in our region (since the 14th century), which has been neglected, poorly understood, and undervalued: the practice of so-called indulgences.

Another special sign (along with pilgrimages, the Holy Door) are indulgences, which are one of the fundamental elements of the Jubilee, in which the fullness of the Father's mercy is expressed. God spreads His mercy in the world through the service of the church via a precious gift that is called by the ancient name "indulgences" (IM 9).

With the gracious summer, the church has once again opened the question of whether indulgences are still today a true, suitable, and understandable sign of repentance. The Holy Father has referred to them as a precious gift from God and the church, and as a distinctive sign of the Jubilee and one of its foundational elements. It should be noted that in our time and in our local church, we are more influenced in the matter of the church’s indulgence practice by a biased interpretation of our history from previous years than by the teaching of the church. In the life of the church, the practice of indulgences has been maintained primarily in the context of All Souls' Day when we offer indulgences for the deceased and as part of the Portiuncula indulgence, which can be obtained on August 2. It will be good if we briefly recall what this is about.

Indulgences originally stemmed from the ancient practice of penance. In patristic times, the entire process of penance was subject to the bishop. He determined what penance the sinner was to perform and how long they were bound to it. St. Augustine mentions that there were many penitents: "There are many penitents, so when hands are laid upon them, it is a long line of people." Since the 4th century, the harshness and length of penance increased. Penance often lasted decades. In the Middle Ages, a significant change occurred in the practice of penance. The sequence of the individual parts of penance was first reversed. Sinners received absolution immediately after confession and not after performing penance. This also significantly diminished the sense of penance as a healing remedy that aided perfect conversion. Gradually, lists emerged in which fixed penance actions were assigned to individual sins. Since the 10th century, the practice of mitigating this penance through indulgences, which could be obtained under certain conditions, appeared. Thus, indulgences themselves never forgave any sins but mitigated the penance. In today's practice of the church, they help us remove the consequences of sins.

Consequences of Sins

"Achieved reconciliation with God does not exclude the persistence of some consequences of sin, from which one must be purified. This is precisely where indulgences gain importance, in which the complete gift of God's mercy is expressed" (IM 9).

Every sin has its harmful consequences. Those external we see: disrupted relationships, damaged health, destroyed property, harm caused to other people or society. The internal ones we often do not realize. Even in our relationships with ourselves, others, and God, we often notice only what cannot be overlooked: when someone is angry with us or does not speak to us, when we cannot reconcile with what has happened, and we refuse to accept the reality of our failure or even reject ourselves, or when we argue with God and are dissatisfied with Him... However, the most insidious consequences of sin are often ones we are completely unaware of and often cannot even admit, let alone acknowledge. With each sin, our hearts become hardened, and we become increasingly unable to be receptive to God's word and respond to manifestations of God's love. The armor of hidden pride grows stronger within us, preventing us from living with God in devoted obedience and childlike trust. We become increasingly opaque, losing our inner innocence and straightforwardness. "For we are hindered by a kind of laziness and dullness of our nature, and the weakness of our spirit keeps us in ignorance and prevents us from understanding God's teaching" (St. Hilary). With this, we also lose the ability to be amazed at the greatness of God and His work; we become less and less able to praise God and thank Him. We become a rebellious people with hardened necks. The consequences of sin cause a person either to resist God or to evade Him. They are full of self and their ideas and wishes, unwilling to change anything significant. They no longer even notice that they are constantly making excuses and justifying themselves, or they become increasingly indifferent and obstinate. We need inner purification.

God is well aware of the internal obstacles we have allowed to grow in our hearts, and He Himself invites us to remove them. We must cease to resist God's working within us and begin to cooperate with Him. One of the ways is also through indulgences.

Temporal Punishment

“Secondly, every sin, even venial ones, causes a harmful attachment to created things that must be purified, either here on earth or after death. This purification removes what is called ‘temporal punishment for sin’” (IM 10; KKC 1472).

When we start talking about eternal and temporal punishments in connection with God, a chill runs down people's spines, and they say: “Surely not! Does God really punish?” In the New Testament, we read that "He disciplines those He loves and punishes everyone He accepts as a son" (Heb 12:6). Many of us have also heard in sermons that the God of the Old Testament is a punishing God of justice, while the God of the New Testament is a loving God of love. Many of us even heard in our childhood: The Lord God will punish you!

Our experience with human love and justice is, on one hand, very important for our relationship with God, but on the other hand, it is very dangerous. It is difficult and sometimes misleading to speak of the Ineffable in human words and based on human experience from human relationships. God is entirely different from us humans, as He does not know human selfishness and pride. He is not influenced in His thoughts and actions by the dark currents of the subconscious. God is completely good and merciful; He is full of love and compassion and, as such, is incapable of any violence against man and any evil. When Sacred Scripture speaks of a punishing God, it speaks of the mysterious power of evil that brings its deadly fruits into the life of man. Punishment is never an active act of God against man but a consequence of our sins, our inability to listen to God and respond to His love. When we speak of punishments in the context of life with God, it always involves the fact that we punish ourselves. God allows the consequences of sins to fall upon His beloved so that He can educate them, purify them, and draw them even more intensely to Himself. It should not be understood as "some kind of revenge by which God punishes the sinner from the outside, but rather as consequences arising from the very nature of sin" (KKC 1472).

Israel has a fundamental experience with God who liberates, with God who is the Father of His people, and thus acts. God's punishment is the same as God's impotence before the hardness and pride of our hearts, which so easily cling to what is fleeting.

Path of Humility

“When believers obtain indulgences, they understand that by their own strength they would not be able to rectify the evil they have caused to themselves and the entire community through sin; therefore, it encourages them towards salvific acts of humility” (IM 10)

We are not humble. One can only gradually become humble through God’s grace. Humility cannot be given to us by various humiliations since we can experience even those in a proud manner. Humiliations can free us from illusions about ourselves only when we experience them before God's face and in connection with Him. Humiliations can liberate us from naive ignorance about ourselves.

Humility is given by God. Jesus is for us the perfect model of humility, and thus we also ask Him to make our hearts humble like His heart. We become humble by being drawn, fascinated, and captivated by God. As long as we revolve around ourselves, we will never stand in the truth. Only God gives us a true view of ourselves and our abilities and strengths, but also of our sins. He opens our eyes to recognize that without Him, we truly can do nothing (cf. John 15:5). Only a believer—someone who does not rely on themselves but places their hope in God and His mercy—can obtain indulgences. Indulgences are not just an external act by which we remove some evil we have committed. In "gaining" indulgences, it is primarily about the inner transformation of ourselves. It is a struggle within our hearts, which, on one hand, inclines toward God, but on the other hand—precisely because of sin—holds morally unacceptable inclinations toward the created world and attachment to evil. It is also about transforming our relationships that we have disrupted through sin and which we are not able to heal on our own. If we are aware of this, we are willing to listen and do what the church leads us to do. It is one way to prepare ourselves to one day become humble: to listen and do what we are called to do.

Spiritual Community

“Praying for the reception of indulgences means entering into a spiritual community and completely opening oneself to others. For no one lives alone, even in the spiritual realm” (IM 10).

Paul VI wrote in his letter dated July 14, 1966: “Indulgences are not a cheap solution to avoid the necessary penance for sins, but they offer strength that individual believers find in humble awareness of their own wretchedness in the mystical body of Christ, which collaborates in their conversion through love, example, and prayer.”

We need one another. The church is a gift for each of us. A person never goes to God alone; it just sometimes takes them a long time to realize this and to learn to be grateful for it. The spiritual community of believers is the only proper environment for living the Gospel. From the very beginning of His public ministry, God's Son created community and lived within it. In community, we cannot seek what can only be given by God, but it is a place where God gifts us—often through others. It is a space for us where we can love our brothers and sisters with their weaknesses. We ourselves often mean a very unpleasant burden for others and cause them pain; at other times we bring them joy and a gift. We are often unaware of what the closeness of people who pray, love God—as best as they can, strive to do good, and love us—means for us. Nothing is a given. The spiritual community is even more real than the physical community. On this wave, we learn to open ourselves to others and give of ourselves, but also on this level, we accept and are supported, often without even realizing it. The entire practice of indulgences counts on this community of spirit, love, and sacrifice. We need others; we also need their intercession and help. In that, not even death divides us, for in Christ, all live for God. Saints often help us more with their intercession on our journey than we can imagine.

For a thorough explanation of the significance of indulgences and their place in the penitential practice of the church, it would certainly be appropriate to reference other related chapters of the book. We will limit ourselves to mentioning at least their titles: Forgiveness and Penance, Sin, Healing Relationships, The Value of Good, Substitutability, The Desire for Holiness.

The book should be published in the coming weeks.