To all parents of my CCD class who were told the First Communion Mass has a plenary indulgence attached and wanted more information, here’s the deal:
When you do drugs, there are two consequences: 1) when you get caught, you’ll be in legal trouble and 2) you’ll eventually begin to look like Yoda as your brain cells die out and your body breaks down.
Sin is the same. There are two consequences: 1) You are separated from God and 2) you rack up soul dirt which has to be cleaned off before you get to Heaven.
In the first case, maybe the judge is lenient and lets you off without jail time, but you can’t get around the effect on your body.
With sin, you can be truly sorry, and with the Sacrament of Confession, God will re-attach you to Himself, but the soul dirt will still be there, crusty and stinky. Blech.
Besides being exclusive about who gets in (close family only, please), God is really specific about the clothes your soul wears to Heaven. They have to be “wedding clothes,” clean, white, and smelling good. You may be close family, but if you stink, he will send you to the wash house before you get in.
The wash house is purgatory.
We don’t know what purgatory will look like or be like, only that it exists, and in it, all the sin-crud gets washed off. Visionaries in the history of the Church say it’s a purifying fire. OUCH!
Purgatory is only for God’s close family members who are on their way to Heaven. If you never bothered to get re-attached to the family via the Sacrament of Confession, you’ll by-pass the wash house and head straight for “H-E-double-hockey-sticks,” as you children have informed me it is called.
Now here’s the cool part.
All the rest of your family in Heaven (even those you haven’t met yet) want you to hurry up and get your tail into Heaven so the party can start! They know if they slip a little currency to the wash house staff, you’ll suddenly find yourself clean and in a new set of duds without any of the painful wash, agitate, or rinse cycles of purgatory.
So what is the currency of Heaven? What could possibly bribe the wash house staff?
Charity. Good deeds. Self-less-ness. Virtue. Obedience. Sacraments. Fasting. Prayer. Mass. All the good stuff we’re supposed to do.
In Heaven, there is a big box called ‘The Treasury of the Church,” and it’s full of all the currency — good stuff — racked up by all the saints who have ever lived and made it to Heaven. A lot of what is in there is the good stuff Jesus did, because he did EVERYTHING God asked him to do. There’s also quite a bit from Mary, because she didn’t have any sin, either.
So when your family in heaven wants to get you through the wash fast, they dip into the Treasury box, and pay for you from their stock of good stuff. This good stuff is the currency of Heaven.
And presto! You’re at the Wedding Feast, eating everything you want without getting fat and spending forever partying with every person who has ever loved God, and hanging out with the One Person Who loves you so passionately He’d rather die than be apart from you. Jesus.
The currency in the Treasury box is made up of big coins and little coins. The little coins, ‘partial indulgences,’ only do a little toward getting you out of the wash house free. The big coins, ‘plenary indulgences,’ are the super power pellets. Just one, and you skip purgatory and go straight to the party.
The First Communion Mass on May 11th has a plenary indulgence attached for anyone who participates. That’s anyone who goes to Mass, hears the readings, says the prayers, and receives Communion. Since the plenary indulgence is such a valuable coin, you have to prove you want it. Beside the Mass, you have to go to Confession within eight days of the Mass, you have to say a prayer for the Pope , and you have to not be holding on to any sins. (For instance, saying you’re sorry in the confessional for looking at pornography, but really intending to get right back to it.)
Okay, so now you have the big coin! Woo Hoo! You can write your name on it and deposit it to the Heavenly Treasury Box to wash out the sin-crud for everything you’ve done up to now, or you can write someone else’s name on it so it can be used to wash out THEIR sin-crud from everything they’ve done up to now. The first is a tremendous blessing (and may save you a lot of post-death pain) and the second is a tremendous act of charity.
Just remember to get to Confession every couple of weeks to stay on God’s ‘close family’ list. Otherwise, frankly, you won’t be needing the indulgence…
The saints already in Heaven are cheering for you!
God bless you,
Sylvia Dorham
