On February 11, 1858, in Lourdes, France, a fourteen year old girl named
Bernadette Soubirous was collecting wood with her sister and friend. Near
the Grotto of Massabielle, she saw an apparition of a woman dressed in white
with a white rosary. She prayed the rosary with the woman who vanished
when they finished.
Three days later, Bernadette saw the lady again, and then sixteen more
times over the next five months. On one visit, the woman in white told
Bernadette to drink from a stream, even though none was visible. Bernadette
scratched at the ground and found water to drink. That stream flows today;
its water is credited with having healing powers.
On her sixteenth visit, the woman identified herself to Bernadette as the
Immaculate Conception. At the time, young Bernadette did not know that
only four years earlier Blessed Pope Pius IX had declared belief in the
Immaculate Conception of Mary to be a doctrine of the Catholic faith.
In 1862, the apparitions at Lourdes were recognized by the Church as
authentic. In 1933 Bernadette was named a saint. Today, six million people
visit Lourdes each year on pilgrimage, many seeking healing or acceptance of
their sufferings in union with those of Christ Crucified.
To mark the 150th Anniversary of the appearance of Our Lady to St.
Bernadette at Lourdes, the Archbishop of Washington, Donald Wuerl, has
designated eleven churches in the archdiocese as pilgrimage churches. In
Prince George’s County they are: St. Mary, Piscataway and Sacred Heart,
Bowie. In Montgomery County they are: Our Lady of Lourdes, Bethesda and
St. Bernadette, Silver Spring. In the District of Columbia they are: Cathedral
of St. Matthew the Apostle, Immaculate Conception Church, and the Chapel
of Our Lady of Lourdes in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception. In Southern Maryland they are: Immaculate
Conception, Mechanicsville, St. Mary, Newport, Our Lady’s Church, Medley’s
Neck, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Solomons.
The faithful who visit one of these specially designated churches and spend
some time there in prayer and reflection, concluding their prayers with the
Our Father, the Creed (either the Apostles’ or Nicene), and a Marian prayer
(such as the Hail Mary, Hail Holy Queen, or Memorare) gain a plenary
indulgence either for themselves or one of the faithful departed. For the
elderly, infirm and homebound who are unable to undertake a pilgrimage to
one of these churches, the indulgence may be gained by uniting themselves
spiritually with those making a pilgrimage to these churches and devoutly
reciting before an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Our Father, the
Creed, and any Marian prayer. One plenary indulgence may be gained every
day from now until February 11, 2008, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and
the actual 150th anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady to St.
Bernadette.
To gain a plenary indulgence, in addition to visiting one of the designated
churches, one must also make a sacramental confession, receive Holy
Communion, pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, and have repented of
all one’s sins, including venial sins. If these conditions are only incompletely
fulfilled, the indulgence obtained will be only partial.
What is an indulgence? The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults tells
us, “Every sin has consequences. It disrupts our communion with God and
the Church, weakens our ability to resist temptation, and hurts others. The
necessity of healing these consequences, once the sin itself has been forgiven,
is called temporal punishment. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other works
of charity can take away entirely or diminish this temporal punishment.
Because of the fullness of redemption obtained for us by Christ, the Church
attaches to certain prayers and actions an indulgence or pardon, that is, the
full or partial remission of temporal punishment due to sin. Christ, acting
through the Church, brings about the healing of the consequences of sin when
an individual uses such a prayer or engages in such an action.”
When we repent and are absolved of our sins through recourse to the
sacraments of the Church, God, in virtue of death his Son willingly suffered
for us, restores us to his friendship and to communion with his Church. This
is an act of great mercy. In the act of pardoning, however, God does not
remove all the ill effects of sin, but desires that we work with him in
repairing the damage we have caused to others and to ourselves by our sinful
behavior. This work of repair is called temporal punishment: temporal
because it occurs in time, whether in this life or in purgatory, prior to our
entrance into eternal life; punishment because it is just that we face the
consequences of our sins and the requirement that we make up for them.
But how can we make up for our sins? Our faith teaches us that only God can
fully make up for our sins, and that he has done this once for all by the
suffering and death of his Son. But God desires that we also share in his
work of atonement by sharing in the sufferings of his Son. (See Philippians
3:10) Therefore, Jesus gives his disciples a share in his cross, which they are
to make their own. It is by sharing in the cross of Christ that we share in the
salvation he won for us on the cross: “If a man wishes to come after me, he
must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in my
footsteps.” (Matthew 16:24) Our cross is not something added to Jesus’ cross
but is the way we share in his one sacrifice. That is what St. Paul was getting
at when he said, “In my own flesh I fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of
Christ for the sake of his body, the church.” (Colossians 1:24)
In a truly marvelous way, it is not only God who makes up for our sins
through the death of his Son, but also the saints, who through their fruitful
sharing in the sufferings of Christ make atonement for us. They do so not
apart from Christ, but in union with him and by virtue of his grace. This is
what we mean by the expression the Church’s “treasury of merits.”
In granting an indulgence, the Church prescribes to the repentant sinner
certain good works as a temporal punishment for past sins. In performing
these works with the desire to please God alone and to cooperate with him in
the work of salvation, the just atonement that one must make for one’s sins is
either completely fulfilled in the case of a plenary indulgence, or partially
fulfilled in the case of a partial indulgence.
However, it is also possible to gain an indulgence for someone who has
already died in God’s friendship but is still in need of purification before
entering into the vision of God. In this case, the person gaining the
indulgence offers his good works—always done, of course, in union with
Christ and by virtue of his grace—in atonement for the sins of the deceased
person. This is but one instance of the marvelous way the members of the
Church assist one another spiritually on the path to salvation.
The word indulgence means favor, as does the word grace. Indulgences
remind us that it is only by the favor of God, that is, by his grace, that we are
saved. But in this work of grace, which God alone makes possible, we are
called to make our own contribution. It is grace itself that makes it possible
for us to cooperate with Christ in his work of salvation, to make his work our
own, and our work his.
The Church as provided us with a beautiful way to observe the 150 th
anniversary of the Marian apparition at Lourdes by offering us the
opportunity to gain indulgences for ourselves and our loved ones who have
died. The Church prescribes that we may obtain at most one plenary
indulgence per day. For each plenary indulgence we must perform the
prescribed work—in this case, visiting one of the pilgrimage churches and
spending some time in prayer and reflection, ending with the Our Father,
Creed and a Marian prayer—confess our sins sacramentally, receive Holy
Communion, pray for the pope’s intentions, and have repented of all our sins,
that is, turned from them in our heart with the sincere intention of not
committing them in the future. (However, it is not strictly necessary to
confess one’s sins sacramentally to obtain each plenary indulgence if, after
confessing one’s sins the first time, one is not conscious of having committed
any mortal or venial sins thereafter.) By performing the prescribed work
without fulfilling all the other conditions, one gains a partial indulgence.
When one has gained a plenary indulgence, one has the assurance that the
person for whom the good works of the indulgence were performed has, in
virtue of this favor, fulfilled the measure of temporal punishment that divine
justice requires. The granting of indulgences is an exercise of the power of the
keys given by Christ to Peter and the apostles. (Matthew 16:19, 18:18) As
Archbishop Wuerl indicates in his catechism The Teaching of Christ, “By a
kind of spiritual leverage as it were, a relatively slight act of piety on the part
of the individual brings upon him a great mercy.”
Have a great week!
Father Tappe