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This is a question about the Treasury of indulgences.
If Jesus' merits are of infinite value in the Treasury, why are the merits of the saints, being of minor value, a meaningful addition to the Treasury?
Don
{ If Jesus' merits are of infinite value in the Treasury, why are the merits of the saints, being a minor value, a meaningful addition? }
Mike replied:
Dear Don,
Thanks for the question.
You said:
If Jesus' merits are of infinite value in the Treasury, why are the merits of the saints, being of minor value, a meaningful addition to the Treasury?
Because being partakers of Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) through the sacraments, we, too, make up part of the Body of Christ.
The difference is that our merits are dependent on the Lord's free will to allow us to partake in adding to this Treasury. The infinite merits of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection stand alone as our saving, redemptive grace that saves us.
Another difference is that the merits of the saints, including Our Blessed Mother Mary, are fixed; they can't add merit to help the Holy Souls in Purgatory, but only Jesus's merits and our ongoing merits while we are journeying on our Earthly pilgrimage, can help the Holy Souls.
Make sense?
If you have an interest in gaining merit for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, check out my other website at:
"in crowning [the saints] merits, you are crowning your own gifts."
(St. Augustine; cited in the Roman Missal, Preface I of the Saints)
In the Catholic understanding, Christ wills to share with us his own merit; everything we have comes from Him and returns to Him. Catholicism looks at things in a corporate way; the Church, including the saints, is the Mystical Body of Christ. It's a living organism, and
"What our spirit, that is, our soul, is to our members, the Holy Spirit is to the members of Christ, the Body of Christ, which is the Church."
This corporate nature means that there are no strict boundary lines between Christ's merits and the saints' merits; Christ's merits are expressed, as it were, through the saints.
I was glancing at a T-Shirt I got for volunteering at a marathon. The organizer of the marathon had bought an ad on it, which simply said, "The Smith family" [not the actual name]. Now I do not know whether he had any young children, but regardless of whether he did or not, he made a contribution on behalf of all family members, young or old. Any young ones would obviously not contribute anything to the ad, but they are included under the "name" of the family. One might offer similar comments about how mothers facilitate Father's Day gifts and cards on behalf of their young, even infant, children. We are God's children; everything we have ultimately comes from him, and we share it, and so the "treasury of merits" is not so much the mathematical sum of all individual or discrete merits, but the possession of the whole family of God through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Another aspect is that these merits have worth because they are God-centered free responses, enabled by grace, to the love of God offered to us. Just as a father is pleased by the paltry tokens of love his children may offer him, like a dandelion flower or whatever, so the Father, who numbers every hair of our head and cares even for the sparrows, is pleased by the fact that we return our love, however infinitesimal its value may seem to be. Love multiplies; it does not divide, and our relationship with God is not a math problem, it's a love-centered relationship—not simply a passive one—and thus requires our free-will cooperation.
In their zeal to emphasize God's sovereignty (Calvin) and mercy (Luther), the Reformers forgot the basic reality that real love is a two-way street and thus calls for a response in kind—especially with Jesus, who will not simply overwhelm us with his grace irrespective of a genuine free-will response (Calvin), or look the other way regarding our sins (Luther). No, Jesus wants to truly rehabilitate us by enabling us to love as he does—unconditionally and sacrificially—and Jesus does so through our self-denying and redemptive cooperation. As St. Augustine says so well, "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us." (St. Augustine, Sermo 169,11,13:PL 38,923) (CCC 1847)
When Jesus was adopted by Joseph, He became heir to David's throne despite the fact that he was not a DNA-descendant of David. Scripture even reckons him as a flesh-and-blood descendant (Acts 2:30, literally "fruit of your loins"). Jesus nevertheless shared in the full inheritance of David. Likewise, when we are adopted as sons and daughters of God (Galatians 4:5), everything that is God's becomes ours to the degree that we choose to receive it. This is all part of God's plan to associate us with His Name (cf. Acts 4:12; Acts 10:43; Acts 15:17) and His Work.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
III. Merit
.
.
2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.
2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.
2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us co-heirs with Christ and worthy of obtaining the promised inheritance of eternal life.(Council of Trent (1547): DS 1546.) The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness. (cf. Council Of Trent (1547): DS 1548.)
"Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God's gifts."
You may have heard of the concepts of monergy and synergy. Catholicism is at its root synergistic (that is, it believes that God enables us, by his grace, to cooperate in the process of our salvation), in contrast to certain other traditions, which radically emphasize the initiative of God to the exclusion of our cooperation. The family is an image of the divine economy.
I invite you to consider, what if you ran your family monergistically?
If you do not understand synergy, you will not understand how the Treasury of Merits works.
In summary, there is ultimately no strict distinction between Christ's merits and the merits of the saints. They all come from his merits on the Cross. God has chosen to associate man with the work of his grace, enabling us, by grace, to synergistically cooperate freely by our response of love to his initiative.
I hope this helps!
If you have other questions or need any other follow-ups, please do not hesitate to ask.
Eric
Please report any and all typos or grammatical errors.
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