Indulgences - PART TWO - Treasury of Grace and Merit

  (Read PART ONE here) (Read PART THREE here) (Read PART FOUR here)

  (This is taken from Indulgences: Double Your Gift)

 Indulgences and Lessening the the Temporal Punishment Due to Sin

Understanding the doctrine of purgatory and the need for penance (satisfaction) also helps us understand the doctrine of indulgences – a doctrine that has been frequently misunderstood and often abused, but that doesn’t mean we need to throw it away. “The abuse does not take away the use”, as the old saying goes.

An indulgence is simply a favor granted by the Church – to which, remember, Christ gave the “Keys of the Kingdom” and the “power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).

By means of this favor, the Church applies the grace of Christ that flows through the Communion of Saints to help us repair the damage and heal the wounds caused by our personal sins.

In other words, instead of having to suffer through the necessary purification oneself, indulgences apply the suffering already lovingly undergone by Christ and the saints to the healing of our wounded souls.

Importantly, indulgences have nothing to do with the eternal consequences of sin. That is, the Church has never taught anything like “you can buy your way to heaven.” Rather, indulgences are a lessening of the temporal punishment due to sin.

Analogously, it’s as if I assigned one of my children a thirty-minute timeout and later reduced it to fifteen minutes.

So where does this reduction in the temporal punishment come from?

It comes from the Treasury of Grace (also called Treasury of Merit). Let me explain...

All the faithful who possess the Holy Spirit form one Body in Christ - the Church (Romans 12:5). In this Body or family all the members can help one another. Jesus, the one mediator - enables us to share in His work by uniting our prayers, works, joys, sorrows and suffering to His great work of Redemption. In this way he uses our cooperation to bring grace and good to others in the Body (the Church).

This is called The Communion of Saints.

This communion of saints has two closely linked meanings:

• It is a communion among holy persons (persons in the state of grace)
• And a communion in holy things (primarily the sacraments - especially the Eucharist, but also the prayers, works, joys, sorrows & suffering united with Christ and offered out of love)

What each one does or suffers through, with and in Christ bears fruit for all.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide" (John 15:16).

All Christians are united by the Holy Spirit even though we live in three different states of being:

1. Some of us are pilgrims on earth journeying to heaven - The Pilgrim Church or The Church Militant
2. Others have died and are being purified in Purgatory - The Church Suffering
3. While still others are in the glory of heaven - The Church Triumphant

The saints in heaven can help us with their prayers. We can help the souls in Purgatory. The souls in Purgatory cannot help themselves but by offering our prayers, works, joys, sorrow and suffering for them we can speed them on to full union with God. They, in turn, pray for us and as they come closer to the glory of heaven, their prayers for us become more & more effective.

“Our prayer for them is capable of not only helping them, but also of making their intercession for us more effective” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 958).

The Communion of Saints is explained simply that in the one family of God, each member of the family can help each other. We read in Matthew 6:19-20:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

Christ is teaching that we can indeed store up “treasure in heaven.” Every time we do something good for God and others and by his grace working in our heart, we “lay up treasure (merits) in Heaven.” And thus there is truly a treasury of good deeds in Heaven.

Revelation 19:7-8 also speaks of this:

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb[a] has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

What do we mean by “Merits?

By this we mean fruits, rewards, or good deeds. But this is not a proportionate system whereby we do certain good works and simply earn our way to heaven, as if God literally “owed” us something.

Rather, Jesus merits our capacity to merit in the first place; He is the primary cause of every merit accrued to us.

But just because he is the primary cause does not mean that we have no part to play at all. If we are connected to him, and use our free will to love others, we are truly secondary causes in his work of salvation.

On our own, we are absolutely incapable of obtaining supernatural merits. This is because we are fallen, sinful human beings. An unplugged lamp won’t give off any light, no matter how many times you turn the switch.

Similarly, original sin unplugged our souls from the source of grace – God himself. When Jesus became man and offered himself in atonement for our sins, he plugged human nature back in to God, so to speak. This was the redemption. And so, anyone who is united to Christ through faith and the sacraments is now once again connected to the source of grace – they are living in the “state of grace.”

Only through, with & in Christ, then, can we merit:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

But that’s the amazing thing. God has given us so much dignity through our union with Jesus. Through, with and in Christ, we can merit. God has consciously chosen to give us the possibility of making a difference in his Kingdom. We are not just along for the ride. What we do and how we choose to live our ordinary lives (how we use our free will) can actually increase the flow of grace in the world, spreading Christ’s Kingdom and storing up treasure for us in heaven.

Jesus has not only saved us from damnation, but he has given us the possibility of becoming active, meritorious collaborators in the work of redemption. Not because we deserve it, but simply because he generously wanted to give us that possibility: he wanted our lives to have real meaning, our actions and decisions to have eternal repercussions; He wanted us to “bear fruit that would remain.” His love makes us friends and collaborators, not just his robots or spiritual trophies.

Though it may seem obvious, we should mention that no one can merit the initial grace of conversion for themselves. The unplugged lamp can’t plug itself in, though once plugged it really is the lamp that shines. A misunderstanding of this point helped fuel the fire of dissension that sparked so many painful divisions among Christians at the time of the Protestant Reformation. We cannot save or redeem ourselves; we need a Savior, a Redeemer: Christ.

But, on the other hand, once we have accepted Christ’s gift of grace, that very gift enables us to merit other graces for ourselves and for the Church. This is a marvelous, wonderful, and underemphasized part of the Good News!

This leads us to The Treasury of Grace/Merit

This treasury includes all of the grace Jesus won for us by his death and resurrection.

It also includes the merits of the saints - the prayers, acts of charity, joy and patient suffering of all the faithful who have ever lived in fidelity to his grace; what they have done through Him, with Him and in Him.

In the communion of saints, we all share in each other’s merits:

“In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1475).

By receiving this grace and practicing virtue we may be purified of the temporal punishment of sin.

The Church dispenses this saving grace through the sacraments. But also through indulgences.

What the Church does, then, in administering an indulgence is apply the treasury of merits (that of Jesus and all the saints) to one of her children, under certain prescribed conditions (e.g., reading the Bible for thirty minutes).

In PART THREE I will go into more detail about the Treasury of Grace/Merit and explain how to gain an indulgence. Read PART THREE HERE