Jubilee 2025

It may be useful here to give a simple explanation of the meaning of a doctrine which has been more greatly misunderstood than any other in the Church’s history. Rightly understood, the Church’s teaching about Indulgences opens new vistas of the inestimable mercy of God. 

Children by their very nature have an irresistible attraction to throwing stones. Imagine your child goes out into the street and in a vindictive moment, perhaps, hurls a rock through the window of your house. Your anger is righteous: and the boy, partly from fear and partly because he realises that he has done something irreparable, tells you he is sorry and asks your forgiveness. When you have cooled down little you say something like this: “Well, as you are sorry, I will forgive you. But remember the damage is done; and you must pay me £1 a week out of your pocket money for the next two months.” Later on, if you are an indulgent parent, you will put your hand in your pocket and give him perhaps a £5 note towards the fund for the new pane of glass.

It is something like that when we commit sin: for all sin is an offence against God. It is as though we have deliberately broken God’s window, to use a terminology which is not strictly correct, for God is impassable. We say that we are sorry. God, the most loving of all Fathers, at once forgives us: but the damage has been done and reparation must be made.

We owe Him a debt after our sin has been forgiven. The Church has always made this quite clear to her children, and in the early days of her history instituted that canonical penance which had to be completed before the erring member of the fold was restored to full membership of the Church. The debt must be paid either in this life, by acts of penance, suffering and prayer, or in the next, by Purgatorial fire. 

But there is another way also. To return to our analogy, like the indulgent parent, God can bestow upon us the wherewithal to pay off part or the whole of what we owe. And that is exactly what happens when we gain an Indulgence. It is a remission of part or the whole of the temporal punishment which remains due to sin after it has been forgiven. 

Notice, nobody can possibly gain an Indulgence from God or Church until he has been forgiven by going to Confession.

Notice too that the Church acts in God’s name. All power has been given to her, to Peter and to his successors. When the Pope grants an Indulgence, he is exercising that authority given to him by Our Lord to bind and to loose, and he is applying the great hoards of the inexhaustible merits of Christ and the Saints to us as individuals. We must show ourselves deserving of such untold benefits and that is indicated by our sincerity and zeal in performing those little acts of prayer, or pilgrimage or penance to which the Indulgences are annexed.

The Jubilee Indulgence marks the outpouring of a great stream of remission. In his Bull announcing the Jubilee, Pope Francis writes:

“This experience of full forgiveness cannot fail to open our hearts and minds to the need to forgive others in turn. 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, albeit still bearing the trace of past tears.” (Spes non Confundit, 23).