Punishment due to sin?

[nr1985]

Hi All,

I had a question about punishment due to sin, after reading about indulgences.

I understand that an indulgence can grant remission of punishment due to sin, as a sort of ‘favour’ granted by the church in its authority given by Christ.

I wondered what forms punishment takes? Does it relate to this life, or only to purgatory?
How could one tell the difference between what was a punishment, and what was just having a bad day?

Thanks!

 

[dmar198]

Hi All,

I had a question about punishment due to sin, after reading about indulgences.

I understand that an indulgence can grant remission of punishment due to sin, as a sort of ‘favour’ granted by the church in its authority given by Christ.

I wondered what forms punishment takes? Does it relate to this life, or only to purgatory?
How could one tell the difference between what was a punishment, and what was just having a bad day?

Thanks!

It is my understanding that the punishment due to sin can be meted out both in this life and in purgatory. Both are the ordinary places of punishment, unless I’ve misunderstood something, but purgatory only comes into play if the punishment due to us wasn’t fully meted out in this life.

As to the forms punishment can take, I believe that one form is the penance we are typically given after Confession. But I do not think penance ordinarily exhausts the full degree of punishment due to our sins. Another form is obviously the fires of purgatory.

As for “having a bad day,” I believe that “bad days” are at least sometimes closely related to the punishment due to sin, because we can “offer it up” (i.e. our sufferings, including “bad days”) in a spirit of penitential suffering.

If we “offer it up” for our own sins, I believe our suffering “bad days” does count as punishment due to sin, and if we suffer more than we deserve, I believe we can offer our sufferings up as prayers for other people.

If we don’t do one of those two things, but simply let it be a “bad day,” then I think that counts as “wasted suffering” and is not a punishment due to sin because we do not receive it as such.

I hope that helps.

 

[fred_conty]

Hi All,

I had a question about punishment due to sin, after reading about indulgences.

I understand that an indulgence can grant remission of punishment due to sin, as a sort of ‘favour’ granted by the church in its authority given by Christ.

I wondered what forms punishment takes? Does it relate to this life, or only to purgatory?
How could one tell the difference between what was a punishment, and what was just having a bad day?

Thanks!

When we want to reuse lumber that has nails in it, we first must extract the nails. But then there are holes that must be fixed as well. Confession extracts the nails, and indulgences and other good works fix the damage left by the holes. If the holes aren’t fixed now, then they must be fixed later in purgatory.

Good works, of prayer, sacrifice and charity, makes up for our damage, and the church has added indulgences to go along with these. Indulgences are the good works, prayers, sacrifices and charity of the saints and especially of Christ, which may be appled to us. The reason: If the church has the power to forgive sins, then it would also have the lesser power to forgive the punishment due to those sins.

And so the church applys this spiritual balm to our offenses by our fullfilling the requirements of the indulgence.

May God our Father give you grace and peace.