I’ll try to give the nutshell version.
Yeah it does! Thank you! So the temporal is what has been left behind from our sin, the effects. And an indulgence is a way of making up for it? So the indulgence helps you through Purgatory? I think? I dont know where I read about Purgatory?I’ll try to give the nutshell version.
Sin has consequences. Those consequences are both eternal (spiritual, everlasting) and temporal (earthly, non-eternal).
In the Sacrament of Confession, God wipes away the eternal consequences of sin. That’s the hard part. But the temporal consequences remain. Indulgences help “pay the price” for those temporal consequences.
The analogy I always use is the neighborhood kid hitting a baseball through the window. He goes to his neighbor and says “I’m sorry” and the neighbor says “I forgive you.” But the window is still broken. And it still needs to be fixed. The broken window is the temporal consequence and an indulgence is the act of fixing it (or paying down the debt we owe for the replacement).
We see this with our sin, too. Just because we step out of the Confessional does not mean that all the consequences of our sins immediately vanish. We still live with the consequences even though God has forgiven us.
Does that make sense?
Right! That’s pretty much what Purgatory is – a place where we pay off the rest of our tab with regards to temporal punishment so that we can enter heaven. Since our sinfulness is incompatible with God’s holiness, we need that final purification before we can enter heaven. But, of course, the ideal is to be purified on earth such that we need not spend any time in Purgatory.
But we don’t want to neglect the temporal side of things. When we utilize both Confession and indulgences, we cannot help but grow in holiness.Great explanation. I will be using your analogy in the future.I’ll try to give the nutshell version.
Sin has consequences. Those consequences are both eternal (spiritual, everlasting) and temporal (earthly, non-eternal).
In the Sacrament of Confession, God wipes away the eternal consequences of sin. That’s the hard part. But the temporal consequences remain. Indulgences help “pay the price” for those temporal consequences.
The analogy I always use is the neighborhood kid hitting a baseball through the window. He goes to his neighbor and says “I’m sorry” and the neighbor says “I forgive you.” But the window is still broken. And it still needs to be fixed. The broken window is the temporal consequence and an indulgence is the act of fixing it (or paying down the debt we owe for the replacement).
We see this with our sin, too. Just because we step out of the Confessional does not mean that all the consequences of our sins immediately vanish. We still live with the consequences even though God has forgiven us.
Does that make sense?
Thanks. Although, I have to admit that I did not come up with that analogy myself but borrowed it from somewhere else (and I cannot recall where).
Catechism 1472 has: “every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory.”