What Is an Indulgence?
An indulgence represents a deepening awareness and appreciation for God’s mercy, love and healing which an individual experiences as the result of performing certain prayers, devotions or pious works.
In announcing the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2015, Pope Francis explained that this healing of the temporal or personal effects of sin represents a gift -- an indulgence -- from God which frees an individual from the consequences of sin and enables them to act with greater charity and love.
In the past, indulgences were often measured in terms of the time in Purgatory required for such healing, but the concept was misleading because Purgatory (like Heaven and Hell) exists outside of time and space as we know it. In his encyclical letter Spe salvi (2007) Pope Benedict XVI explained: "...Our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.The practice of buying and selling indulgences was one of the practices strongly criticized by the Protestant Reformers.
Learn More:
> "Revisiting Indulgences" by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser text here.