Page:Pastoral Letter Promulgating the Jubilee - Spalding.djvu/28

Rh value and efficacy, for appeasing God's justice, from their union with the abounding merits and sufferings of Christ.

By denying this Catholic doctrine of satisfaction, which is the very basis of Indulgences; and the logical sequel to it,—that after the remission of sin, some temporal punishment often remains due to God's rigorous justice, to be undergone either in this world or in the expiating flames of Purgatory in the next,—our dissenting brethren really grant to their followers a standing plenary Indulgence of the most ample kind, and on the lightest possible conditions! If there be, then, any encouragement of sin, it is not certainly the Catholic Church, but the sects opposed to her, who are guilty of it, by removing from repentance all those things which are hardest to flesh and blood, and making the conditions of pardon so very light and easy.

A Jubilee is, as We have said, the most solemn and the most ample form of plenary Indulgence. It is an application to the soul of the truly contrite and already forgiven sinner of the most abundant treasures of the Church, based upon the unlimited power of the Keys and of binding and loosing, imparted by Christ to St. Peter and to his Successors in the Apostolic office. Only the generous and the fervent Christian can hope to share, to the full, in these exuberant riches of the divine mercy; but to such, the Jubilee is really, what its name implies, a season of gladness and of joy unspeakable. These fervent souls hear with exultation the words of the Lord: "Sound the trumpet, and proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land; for it is the year of Jubilee." (Leviticus, xxv.)

Under the Mosaic dispensation, the Jubilee was celebrated with joyful and solemn observances every fiftieth year. The land lay fallow; the vines were left unpruned; and whatever grew spontaneously on the soil was held to be common to masters and servants, to strangers and natives, to animals and men. All debts were forgiven; those who had been compelled to sell or alienate their possessions were restored