The biblical notion of “Jubilee” can be summed up in two words: rest and remission. The Jubilee was a time to rest the land and the body (cf. Lev. 25 and 27). Along with rest came a call to emancipate, forgive, and restitute: slaves were set free, debts remitted, lands restored. The original calculation of the Jubilee year (seven years times seven) is based on the “rest” God took on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2-3). A prominent component of a Jubilee year—a component often misunderstood (and abused)—may be better grasped if we consider it in view of the “rest” so characteristic of a Jubilee Year.
A review of the teaching on indulgences is readily available in paragraphs 1471-1479 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where we find a definition given by Pope Paul VI:
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 prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints. (Indulgentiarum Doctrina, Norms, 1)
The fact is that sin has a devastating effect on our soul because it makes us restless. Saints Augustine and Boethius offer penetrating analyses of this restlessness in the Confessions and Consolation of Philosophy respectively. Augustine writes, “my sin was that I sought out pleasures, grandeurs, and truths not in him but in his creatures, in myself, and in others, and thus fell headlong into sorrows, confusion, and errors” (Confessions, I, 20). The last thing the Lord wants for any of us is “sorrows, confusion, and errors,” and Augustine eventually learned that he wanted none of it. What he sought was rest. “Et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.” “Our heart is restless until it rests in thee” (Confessions I, 1).
A century later, Boethius, with the help of Lady Philosophy, regained sight of this same truth as he awaited execution in a prison cell. He realized that sin enslaves us by robbing us of our capacity to act freely, thus instilling an anxious sense that we are not in control of ourselves because we are no longer master over our emotions and actions. “Their ultimate slavery,” Lady Philosophy says of us humans, “comes when they are given over to vices and fall away from the possession of their reason . . . By assenting and yielding to these passions, they worsen the slavery to which they have brought themselves and are, as it were, the captives of their own freedom” (Consolation of Philosophy, V, 2).
Dante the pilgrim is struck by the weightiness of sin when he encounters the prideful ascending the first ledge of Mount Purgatory with large, heavy stones on their backs (cf. Divine Comedy, Purgatory, 11). For when pride, “the queen of sins, has fully possessed a conquered heart, she surrenders it immediately to seven principal sins (i.e., vainglory, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust), as if to some of her generals, to lay it waste” explains Saint Gregory the Great (Moralia, 87). If you have even been in serious debt, you know what Augustine, Boethius, Dante, and Gregory are talking about. Financial debt makes us anxious, paralyzed, constantly worried. We find it hard to sleep. We can’t eat. We are not as free as we were when we were financially solvent.
In short, all sin—large or small—incurs a debt we simply cannot pay off. Think of the characters in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21-35). That is why the name “indulgence” could not be more appropriate. The Latin root means “gentleness,” “tenderness,” or “fondness.” We could say that the power of an indulgence is that God “indulges” us. It is He who is gentle, tender, and fond of us.
Engaging in the practice of indulgence is not an exchange (a commercium in Latin), a sort of “if you do this, I’ll do that,” because our sins are forgiven when we perform the act. Rather, it is primarily a way of detaching ourselves from the “unhealthy attachment to creatures” which is a principal effect of sin even after it has been remitted through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (cf. CCC, 1472). It is this attachment that makes us anxious, restless, worried. We feel that even though God has forgiven us, we are still unhealthily attached to the gambling, the drinking, the online porn, the petty lies, the pointless gossip, the anger, the pride, or whatever.
We often think of “temporal punishment” as a “number of years to be spent in purgatory,” but its deeper meaning lies precisely in detaching us from unhealthy worldly attachments. This is why the Church invites us to accept temporal punishment as “a grace” (CCC 1472) and to engage in the practice of indulgence in that spirit. “Indeed,” writes Pope Francis, “the indulgence is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God’s mercy,” for it is an expression “of the fullness of God’s forgiveness, which knows no bounds” (Spes non confundit, 23). By striving to accomplish works of mercy and charity, to pray, and to perform acts of penance, we completely put off the “old man” and put on the “new man” so that we may be prepared “for the experience of heaven by purifying the soul to stand in God’s presence and gaze upon his glory” (cf. CCC 1473; Eph. 4:24).
We may even think of “temporal punishment” (let alone “eternal punishment”!) as a “kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without” rather than “following from the very nature of sin” (CCC 1472). But that is a mistake. We should rather think of temporal punishment as a free gift, an opportunity, an extension of God’s mercy to the deepest corners of our soul that remain restless and anxious even when we are in a state of grace.
We can learn much about temporal punishment from Dante’s Purgatory. In vivid imagery, he describes how souls ascending the mount sing psalms, recite prayers, and encourage one another. Angels help them ascend when the climb overwhelms them. The seven sins (represented by seven terraces) that Gregory says our souls would surrender to without God’s mercy are serially conquered by God’s grace, and such an “ascent” is indeed possible in this life when we engage humbly in the practice of indulgence in this Jubilee of Hope.
The overwhelming joy of being purified by God’s grace through the practice of indulgence leads us, in turn, to share His mercy with others. “This experience of full forgiveness,” Francis writes, “cannot fail to open our hearts and minds to the need to forgive others in turn.” He continues:
Forgiveness does not change the past; it cannot change what happened in the past, yet it can allow us to change the future and to live different lives, free of anger, animosity, and vindictiveness. Forgiveness makes possible a brighter future, which enables us to look at the past with different eyes, now more serene.
The Lord ardently desires this serenity. The last thing He wants is for us to be anxious. He knows better than we that what we really need is rest. And that is exactly what this Jubilee is for. So, indulge yourself. Better yet, let Him indulge you.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
