I started reading about indulgences … Can someone please explain what they are to me?
“An indulgence is 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 defined conditions through the Church’s help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints” (Indulgentarium Doctrina 1)."
Basically, sin has eternal consequences and temporal consequences. In the sacrament of Confession, the
eternal consequences are remitted and you are absolved of your sin. But the
temporal consequences of sin remain. This is because God is both merciful and just. The most common example-explanation is:
A kid hits a baseball through his neighbor’s window, breaking it. The neighbor forgives the kid. But the window is still broken. If no one does anything about the window, bugs and rain and snow will get into the house, and further property damage will ensue, etc. So something needs to be done to repair the damage to the window, even though the kid has been forgiven of the sin.
This could be done by the kid giving some of his allowance to go towards repairs. Or the kid going and helping board up the hole. Or cleaning up the mess. There are many ways the kid can make reparation for what he’s done. None of this is to earn or win forgiveness, which was already freely given. Rather, it is for the kid to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
Sin has far-reaching consequences that we don’t always think about. A young boy who sees his mother beaten by his father might grow up to treat women poorly in the same way: the father is responsible for the bad example he sets for his son. Even if the father and mother reconcile with each other and with God, if the father never spoke to his son about it, there are ramifications that aren’t taken care of simply by the father being forgiven.
Indulgences, then, are the Church’s way of granting remission of those temporal punishments due to sin. Indulgences
only remit
temporal punishment, not
eternal punishment: indulgences don’t get you out of Hell, they get you out of Purgatory (which is the final cleansing before you enter Heaven, which nothing unclean may enter). Indulgences are only applicable to
sin that has already been forgiven: you cannot receive an indulgence for a sin you have not confessed (or haven’t committed yet!).
Indulgences are granted for things like prayers (like the Act of Faith), pious practices (like reading Scripture 30 minutes a day), and many other things. There’s a lengthy (though not comprehensive) list
here.
What’s really amazing is that, if you receive a
plenary indulgence, it means all your temporal punishment has been remitted. (Thus, if you were to die immediately afterwards, with no other sin on your soul, you would go straight to Heaven.) But that doesn’t mean that any additional pious acts or sufferings on your part would be wasted; instead, because of the Communion of Saints, your good works (which God created you for) can be beneficial to others.
