Christ and His Church

The other morning after Mass I exposed the Blessed Sacrament on our church's altar for an hour of adoration by the faithful. I left the church for about 20 minutes to take care of a few things in the parish office and then returned to spend the rest of the hour with the Lord before Benediction. 

I prayed and gazed upon the gift of Christ's Real Presence in the monstrance, but as usual my prayers were lacking -- self-absorbed prayers of petition driven not by the Father's will but by mine. At some point I realized how imperfect my prayer had become, and glanced up at the large crucifix suspended over the sanctuary. 

As my thoughts turned from my petty problems, I found myself pondering Jesus Christ and His Church. When we see Jesus we see the Church, His Mystical Body, for He is its head and we are its members. Where Jesus is, so too is His Church. There, high over the sanctuary, is Jesus, nailed to that Cross to redeem us, to forgive us of our sinfulness, to free us from our enslavement. And there, too, is His Church, crucified by the sins of its own members. Every sin is yet another pounding of the hammer on those nails. Every sin is another of God's people admitting that he prefers slavery to true freedom. Things really haven't changed much since the days of Moses. Here we are, three millennia later, and like God's chosen ones, we too are willing to toss freedom aside in exchange for the modern equivalent of the fleshpots of Egypt [Ex 16:3]. 

I experienced a kind of vision as I knelt at the foot of the altar looking up at our crucified Jesus. High on the back wall of the sanctuary a window framed  the large crucifix, and beyond that window clouds rushed across the blue Florida sky. And, oh, did they rush! They moved quickly, so quickly a single cloud was visible for only a second or two before another took its place. I had been outside earlier and it hadn't been at all windy, and yet those clouds flew by that window. Watching them, I thought only of the passage of time, the centuries moving through God's Creation and carrying us, His Church, with them. But there, in stark contrast to the fleeting clouds, was Jesus on the Cross, unmovable, constant, the Lord of History, the Eternal Word, a sign of God's unchanging love.

I can't write about the horrendous sins of some priests, bishops, and others (deacons?), at least not today, because I simply don't know the facts. In truth I'm not sure I want to know the facts, all the sordid details. I have enough trouble confronting my own sinfulness without having to deal with the sins of others. But the facts will ultimately be revealed because the truth cannot be hidden forever. How did Jesus put it in today's Gospel passage from Luke?

"For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light" [Lk 8:17].

The truth can't be stashed in some chancery closet because God's suffering Church demands the truth. And the truth will set us free even if it leads to seemingly hard times for the Church in the days to come. The Church, like Jesus on the Cross, will always be a suffering Church. But despite the sinfulness of its people, the Church itself remains holy.

Pope Francis and our bishops should perhaps listen to the words of St. Catherine of Siena who, in the year 1380, in the midst of another crisis that threatened to tear the Church apart, wrote the following to Pope Urban VI:

“You cannot with a single stroke wipe out all of the sins people in general are committing within the Christian religion, especially within the clerical order, over whom you should be even more watchful. But you certainly can and are obligated to do it, and if you don’t, you would have it on your conscience. At least do what you can. You must cleanse the Church’s womb — that is, see to it that those who surround you closely are wiped clean of filth, and put people there who are attentive to God’s honor and your welfare and the good of holy Church. …”

St. Catherine went on to warn the pope:

“Do you know what will happen to you if you don’t set things right by doing what you can? God wants you to reform his bride completely; he doesn’t want her to be leprous any longer. If your holiness does not do all you can about this — because God has appointed you and given you such dignity for no other purposes — God will do it himself by using all sorts of troubles.”

Yes, indeed, if we do not act God will "do it himself" as he has many times in the past...just as he did it himself when he stretched out his arms at Calvary.