In the bulletin, you will find an insert which contains Archbishop Gustavo’s letter on the special indulgences we can receive during the Year of Faith. These Indulgences will be granted for spending time in prayer and reflection at one of the pilgrimage sites listed on the back of the insert. This will also be a wonderful opportunity to join in solidarity with the Catholic Church in San Antonio as well as with the Universal Church in Rome.

The Catechism teaches us that our sins have a double consequence, one of being out of Communion with God, which is reconciled through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and then a Temporal Punishment from which we must be purified either here on earth or after death in purgatory (CCC 1472). This is the purpose of an Indulgence as it is a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven” (CCC 1471).

In his “Confessions,” St. Augustine contemplates how it is that we are able to know God when we have no prior knowledge or memory of Him. As the mystics and Saints throughout history have demonstrated, it is precisely through silent prayer and reflection, the sort of prayer which allows God to intrude upon our silence and speak directly to our hearts, that we come to know God. “Therefore, as long as I journey away from you, I am more present with myself than with you” (St. Augustine, Confessions X, 5). Through these pilgrimages, may we journey towards God and become more of God than of ourselves, allowing Him to speak to our hearts which desire nothing more than to be in union with His.

“At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).