I bind myself today:
God’s power to guide me
God’s might to uphold me
God’s wisdom to teach me
God’s eye to watch over me
God’s ear to hear me
God’s word to give me speech
God’s hand to guide me
God’s way to lie before me
God’s shield to shelter me
God’s host to secure me
Someone who is important to me has recently had the experience I probably fear MORE than the actual death of one of my children. The child has come home from college as a self-described atheist. In response the parent has remarked that people who convert from one significant life philosophy to another tend to reject the one while embracing the other. The first receives no benefit of the doubt whatsoever and is heaped with derision while the new philosophy is viewed is the warmest possible light and through rose-colored glasses. I agree that is often the case but my experience of conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism is more along the lines of converting from Judaism to Christianity. Certainly someone who is Jewish and remains Jewish would see the conversion of a child from Judaism to Christianity as a rejection of Judaism; but, the convert himself would like see his conversion as a fulfillment of his Jewishness in the same way the New Covenant is a fulfillment of the old.
I personally view my conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism as the fulfillment of what was hinted at when I was a Protestant. I have also described my conversion as jumping from the swimming pool into the ocean. Frankly, because I went to the Catholic church as an act of obedience and my conversion to Catholicism came afterwards, that was not at all what I expected to find in the RCC. I was in the water in the Protestant traditions I grew up in, I was swimming but I kept finding myself frustrated by my inability to go any distance. I’d swim endless laps but never really GO anywhere substantive. I’d try to dive deeply only to find myself hitting a wall. When I try to describe what I have found in the RCC….the fullness, the richness, the JOY!!…..words start to fail me. Does that mean I think Protestants don’t have a full, rich, joyful faith? NO! It doesn’t because I am not rejecting Protestantism as much as I am embracing the fullness of the faith I found there. In fact, there may be many Protestants who in an individual way may have a fuller, richer, deeper faith than my own but I believe to the core of my being that every Protestant, regardless of their personal spiritual depth and maturity, could be deeper and more mature still by embracing the parts of Truth that they reject.
If every Catholic that discussed his or her faith with a Protestant had a nickel for every time the subject of Indulgences came up, we could pool our money and buy…well…something really big but not an Indulgence because those are not for sale nor were they ever AUTHORIZED to be sold. (Not saying that some crazies didn’t do that but…well they weren’t supposed to.) And if you throw in the number of times that Catholics who discuss their faith with Protestants say, “No we do not worship Mary?” And get a nickel for each of those times, we could probably buy….well I don’t know I couldn’t even begin to spend that much money.
All right then. So lets talk about a Catholic way of looking at Mary and Indulgences. (This should not be confused with an exhaustive defense.) Everything that Catholics believe about Mary somehow connects to what we believe about Jesus. Jesus’ sacrifice makes us children of God. Our living, active faith makes us part of the family of Jesus. God the Father, Jesus the Son, Mary the earthly mother of Jesus (no she isn’t divine or eternally existing.) …..and we are part of Jesus’ family…..that makes Mary, our Mother too. There is additional scriptural foundation for this thought as well but that’s not my purpose with this particular entry. Mary is also known as “The Mother of God” Jesus is fully divine. He possessed full divinitiy from the moment of His Incarnation at conception by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary; therefore, his earthly mother is “The Mother of God” and to deny that is to somehow deny the divinity of Christ. No she is not the source of his divinity…. any more that I am the source of the soul for MY children but yet I am the mother of them body and soul. Mary is the “New Ark of the Covenant” not because of what she is but because she bore Jesus in her body and Jesus was the fulfillment of the contents of the Old Ark of the Covenant (Aaron’s rod is fulfilled by the priesthood of Jesus, the tablets of the law are fullfilled in Jesus, and manna is the prefigurement of Jesus as the Bread of Life in the Eucharist)
So back to indulgences. Indulgences are really the logical conclusion about a belief in PRAYER. Prayer matters. Prayer changes things. We are COMMANDED to pray for each other. Prayer builds up the body. If you pray for me, I believe that I am strengthened by that. Prayer also acts on us as individuals. Prayer opens up our souls to the Movement of God and that makes a difference. Every. Time. Through the teaching on indulgences, the Catholic Church is really saying that prayer matters. Not only does prayer for others matter because it is effectual, but also that our prayers for each other are not bound by time and space the way we are. Prayer because it is commnication with the divine, connects to the eternal. There is a lot more to know about indulgences both their history and what they are, but perhaps if we flip our perspective just a little to see what is at the ROOT of the teaching they might not be quite as scary as Protestants make them out to be. (Often….don’t want to generalize and offend unnecessarily!)
