Picture the scene: The children are playing outside on the first dry day in so long. It seems like a good opportunity to get the floor cleaned. So, you tell the children to take off their shoes before they come in. Needless to say, that doesn’t happen. There are now muddy footprints all across the floor you have just cleaned.  You ‘react’; the child says sorry and begs forgiveness, which of course you offer but tell them that ‘the mop is in the corner’, so get to it. This is a very simple way to understand the ‘double consequence of sin’. When we go to Confession, our sin, walking across the floor in muddy shoes, is forgiven, but the ‘temporal punishment’, the mop is in the corner, or the attachment to sin that remains in us, has to be purified, ‘either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory’. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1472).

This purification can take place in a number of ways. The Catechism, CCC, says this: [The Christian] must strive by works of mercy and charity, as well as by prayer and the various practices of penance, to put off completely the “old man” and to put on the “new man.” (CCC #1473) In other words, as granny might have said to you, ‘offer it up’. We can and should offer everything to GOD; ‘…patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace.’ (CCC #1473)

The Church also offers us the remission of this temporal punishment by means of an Indulgence. “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, 9by going to Confession)… indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin. Indulgences may be applied to the living or the dead.” (CCC #1471) There are various conditions attached to receiving an indulgence, such as: complete detachment from all sin (including venial), sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the Pope’s intentions. Other conditions may be attached, as was the case during the Jubilee Year. However, an indulgence can be obtained any time by what are called the Big 4. Praying the Rosary in a Church or with another person, a half hours adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, or half hour reading scripture, or walking the Way if the Cross in a church.  These indulgences can be obtained anytime and while a single confession suffices for many indulgences, separate Communion may be required.

An indulgence is obtained through the Church…, by virtue of the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus… ‘”Those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven…”’(Jn.20:23. CCC #1478). The purpose of an indulgence is not ‘…simply to come to the aid of these Christians, but also to spur them to works of devotion, penance, and charity.’  (CCC # 1478). By means of an Indulgence we avoid having to mop the floor in purgatory.