Cosmos The In Lost
I believe with every cell of my body and every faculty of my soul that the Church is truly the divinely founded means of uniting us to God, of bringing us to the fulfillment of our deepest desires. But this faith isn’t a blind acceptance of something for which I have no evidence. There is a kind of verification in experience. Living in the Church has awakened a deep desire and longing for God in me, and it has begun to satisfy that desire in such a way that it grows. Not to be immodest, but I think that in a beginners way I have experienced what really serious believers say about a thirst which is sweet and unbearable at once, and which grows greater and sweeter and more unbearable the more it is slaked. So I can say with the Samaritan villagers: It is no longer because of your talk that we believe; we ourselves have heard, and we know (John 4:42).
Lector: Except (a) you haven’t actually seen Jesus Christ the way those villagers had, and (b) even if you have some kind of experiential evidence of Christ that’s not evidence for the Catholic Church in particular; any Christian could say the same thing.
Auctor: Of course I haven’t actually seen Jesus Christ the way the Apostles had. But I have (a) experienced him (b) in and through his Church. I have encountered him in His sacraments, in His word handed down from the Apostles to His successors, and in the holiness and beauty of the community He founded. St. John says, we have seen his glory, and what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have watched and our hands have felt… we announce to you. And in the Church one can in a real sense see that glory and touch that reality.
Lector: You cannot be serious! “The holiness and beauty of the community,” is that seriously supposed to refer to the Catholic Church, the greatest collection of hypocrites and assholes in history?
Auctor: I don’t deny that there are many hypocrites and rascals in the Church, who tarnish the splendor of the truth; I am one myself. But I have experienced again and again the victory of grace over human frailty in her. The holiness and unity and peace made within her, the forgiveness, the spontaneous unity among persons of all nations and characters. The mercy that I have myself received from through her, and which has helped me be a little bit less bad of person. As Don Julian Carron likes to say, “the victory of Christ is the Christian people.”
Lector: But, again, any Christian could say that.
Auctor: Of course, as Lumen Gentium puts, “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of [the] visible structure [of the Church],” but these really belong to the Church and impel toward unity with her.
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