Rome Newsroom, Dec 10, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has decreed a Year of St. Joseph in which Catholics will have the opportunity to obtain a special plenary indulgence.
Until December 2021, there are many new ways that Catholics can receive an indulgence, including entrusting their daily work to the protection of St. Joseph the Worker or reciting the rosary with their families.
These acts must be accompanied by sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the pope’s intentions, the usual conditions to obtain any plenary indulgence.
Plenary indulgences remit all temporal punishment due to sin and must be accompanied by full detachment from sin.
According to the decree issued by the Apostolic Penitentiary on Dec. 8, there are 15 ways to receive an indulgence in the Year of St. Joseph:
1) Participate in a spiritual retreat for at least one day that includes a meditation on St. Joseph.
2) Pray for St. Joseph’s intercession for the unemployed that they might find dignifying work.
3) Recite the Litany of St. Joseph for persecuted Christians. Byzantine Catholics have the option of an Akathist to St. Joseph.
4) Entrust one’s daily work and activity to the protection of St. Joseph the Worker.
5) Follow St. Joseph’s example in performing a corporal work of mercy. These include feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the imprisoned, visiting the sick, and burying the dead.
6) Perform one of the spiritual works of mercy, such as comforting the sorrowful, counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving injuries, and praying for the living and the dead.
7) Pray the rosary together with one’s family in order that “all Christian families may be stimulated to recreate the same atmosphere of intimate communion, love and prayer that was in the Holy Family.”
8) Engaged couples can also receive an indulgence from praying the rosary together.
9) Meditate for at least 30 minutes on the Lord’s Prayer, because St. Joseph “invites us to rediscover our filial relationship with the Father, to renew fidelity to prayer, to listen and correspond with profound discernment to God’s will.”
10) Pray an approved prayer to St. Joseph on St. Joseph Sunday, the Sunday after Christmas in the Byzantine Catholic tradition.
11) Celebrate the feast of St. Joseph on March 19 with an act of piety in honor of St. Joseph.
12) Pray an approved prayer to St. Joseph on the 19th of any month.
13) Honor Joseph with an act of piety or approved prayer on a Wednesday, the day traditionally dedicated to St. Joseph.
14) Pray to St. Joseph on the Feast of the Holy Family on Dec. 29.
15) Celebrate the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1 with an act of piety or prayer.
“All the faithful will thus have the opportunity to commit themselves, with prayers and good works, to obtain with the help of St. Joseph, head of the celestial Family of Nazareth, comfort and relief from the serious human and social tribulations that today afflict the contemporary world,” the decree signed by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza said.
The elderly, the sick, and the dying who are unable to leave their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic also have special permission to receive an indulgence by “offering with trust in God the pains and discomforts” of their lives with a prayer to St. Joseph, hope of the sick and patron of a happy death.
The decree noted that in this instance the person must have the intention of fulfilling, as soon as possible, the three usual conditions for an indulgence, as well as a detachment from sin.
The Apostolic Penitentiary permits any prayer to St. Joseph approved by the Church, mentioning in particular the “To you, O blessed Joseph” prayer composed by Pope Leo XIII:
“To you, O blessed Joseph, do we come in our tribulation, and having implored the help of your most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke your patronage also. Through that charity which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by his Blood, and with your power and strength to aid us in our necessities.”
“O most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; O most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; O our most mighty protector, be kind to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with the power of darkness.”
“As once you rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God’s Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; shield, too, each one of us by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your aid, we may be able to live piously, to die in holiness, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven. Amen.”
[…]
Visits and councils create opportunities for prayer, discussions, sharing of viewpoints, discovering common paths, enhancing camaraderie, togetherness, and on-going-ness among fellow pilgrims engaged in a common journey on God’s Holy Ground.
During the council, the bishops condemned the heresy of Arianism, which asserted that the Son was created by the Father. Arius, a priest who faced excommunication for propagating the heresy, did not accept that the Son was coeternal with the Father (Tyler Arnold CNA).
The historical plot thickens with the heretical residue of distancing the flesh and blood Christ from the divine Word, addressed by St Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria’s anathema’s against Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople at Ephesus 431 AD. Controversy continued until Chalcedon 451 AD and Cyril’s formulation of the doctrine of two natures in Christ. Unfortunately the heresy continued to have purchase in the East. Earlier possibility of a Filioque clause, referring to the divinity of the Holy Spirit was discussed in context of its absence in the original 325 AD Nicene Credo during the Council of Constantinople 381. That Council was called by emperor Theodosius to settle the identity of Christ.
“The term ‘Filioque’ was first employed, referencing the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in 589 AD at the Third Council of Toledo, but it may have been inserted later. The Church of Rome added the phrase ‘and the Son’ to the creed in the 11th century, giving it papal authority and making it definitive. Most scholars agree that the term was introduced during Benedict VIII’s reign 1014-15” (Google AI).
Filioque Clause perhaps for the Greek Orthodox the most controversial doctrine of the Latin Church has long been contested. Catholicism for example insists on a dogmatic doctrine of a complete human nature in the person Christ in context of two wills, one human one divine, which the Orthodox reject settling exclusively for a divine will [and as such refuse to accept the doctrine of the Holy Spirit proceeding from Christ].
A divine will is compatible with the Holy Spirit ‘poured out’ by Christ upon Mankind. As well as from the Father. Our solemnity of Pentecost celebrated by the Latin Church throughout the world makes that truth clear, that the Pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon Church and world is the gift of both Son and Father.
Addendum: The Filioque clause was indeed added to the Credo during the 381 AD Council of Constantinople [as I note in my book Assent to Truth]; however, not to the Nicene Credo, rather to the Credo of Constantinople.
A divine will and a human will in one person is compatible with the one Person Christ pouring the Holy Spirit upon Mankind. Whereas a person with simply one will that is divine, is compatible with the Holy Spirit poured out exclusively by the Father, the Son relegated to an inferior human person, which is the theological error of the Orthodox position.
Such an exclusivity of divine nature identified in the Word, or Father, also brings into question the validity of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Which was Cyril of Alexandria’s 11th Anathema against Nestorius, who denied communion with the divine presence when we consume the flesh of Jesus, flesh he assumed from the Blessed Virgin. As such Nestorius repudiated the belief that Mary was Mother of God.
Additionally it needs be said that the omission of a human will in Christ as held by the Orthodox diminishes the integrity of the hypostatic union itself, and with that the unity of the Trinity. For example, what is Man without a will? An ox, an antelope? Even they have an instinctive will. Furthermore, it contradicts Christ’s freely given assent to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane regarding the crucifixion. All this impinges on the controversial Filioque Clause.
The Son of Man as Christ frequently refers to himself is not the divinity wrapped in a cloak of human flesh, rather the perfectly obedient son who ‘freely’ does the Father’s will and achieves our salvation. Who can promise us he will send us the advocate, the fire of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.