The Deacon's Bench
Last week, I found myself in a small Vietnamese restaurant in midtown Manhattan, sharing a table for lunch with two other people—one of them a bishop from India. He comes from the northern part of the country, a place where most people are farmers or fishermen.
It is a place, too, where many people have never heard the name “Jesus.”
This is the very definition of what you might call mission country. Most of the people are poor. There are few priests or brothers or sisters. The bishop has no home other than a simple hut. He has no budget, no big office, no staff, no cathedral. He travels around the diocese, visiting different missions, often sleeping on the floor.
Most of those who are ministering to the faithful are lay people—catechists who travel around to give prayer services or teach.
They are ready to spread the Gospel however they can, wherever they can, often at great risk. They live every day with the very real threat of martyrdom. Yet they do what they do anyway, with love and zeal and tremendous faith.
In some places, they don’t have Mass very often. But they try to make the most of it. And their faith is nothing less than inspiring. They have much to teach us.
The bishop described one woman who attended Mass whenever she could, however she could. She was not yet baptized, so she couldn’t receive the Eucharist. And this saddened her so much. She would go to church and see her friends and neighbors receiving Communion, yet she couldn’t. She hungered for Christ.
But: although she couldn’t receive Communion, she did what she felt was the next best thing.
When someone went up for Communion, she would watch them, find where they were sitting and she would then move to sit next to them in the pew.
This was her Communion.
In her heart, she said to herself: “Jesus is here. I want to be as close to him as I can.”
What love for the Lord. And what love for the Body of Christ.
This was her greatest joy.
It should be ours, too.
I know: joy isn’t easy right now. Nothing seems easy, or seems the way it should be.
Our hearts are heavy, angry, confused. We are burdened by too much bad news about our Church, when words like “bombshell” and “scandal” are peppering the headlines, and when the prevailing question among so many seems to be “What did he know and when did he know it?”
Well, there is much we just don’t know—but here is something we do know.
At a moment when many are trying to label the Catholic Church, or define it, or redefine it, we need to remember just what this Church we call Catholic is. What it represents. What it means.
What is the Catholic Church?
Just look around you.
This is the Catholic Church. We are the Catholic Church.
That woman in India drawing near to Jesus is the Catholic Church.
If you want a reminder of how much this faith matters, how much our weary and troubled and broken church still means to people, in spite of everything, there it is.
It is faithful men and women like that. They are people who will spend half a day walking to a church to be able to go Mass and then spend another half a day walking back home—and they do it with joy.
That is the Catholic Church.
It is sisters teaching schoolchildren how to pray in places where they don’t yet know how to read.
It is priests traveling for hours, sometimes on foot, to distant villages to say Mass or hear confessions or bless a marriage.
It is people risking their lives to tell the story of Jesus so that those who have never heard that name discover that they are loved, that they have dignity, that they have hope.
It is men, women and children like those in this church this day, giving your hearts and your hopes to God, serving our brothers and sisters in need, witnessing to the Gospel at home, at work, whether on your feet or on your knees.
This is the Catholic Church.
We are the Catholic Church.
My friend and mentor Deacon Bill Ditewig wrote a blog post yesterday, quoting this letter from James we heard a few moments ago.
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Bill explained:
“Our religion,” he wrote, “should be known first and foremost for how we care for those most in need—not by our vestments, our grand churches, our rituals or the brilliance of our teaching. When people think of Christianity, may they come to think first of the thousands upon thousands of selfless people – laity, religious, and clergy – who pour their lives out in service at home and around the world.”
This is the Catholic Church.
In a time of scandal and uncertainty, when you may not know who or what to believe, believe this:
The Catholic Church is beautifully, miraculously, courageously alive. And it lives through Christ who lives in us.
Yesterday, a Jesuit priest by the name of Edward Reese preached the homily at the funeral for Senator John McCain at the National Cathedral. He quoted the great Catholic poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins:
“What I do is me: for that I came.”
I say more–the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ – for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
That is who we are, that is the Church: Christ playing in ten thousand places, lovely to the Father through the features of men’s faces.
This is who we are.
There is a lot of uncertainty, anger, even despair right now. There are calls for reform, for resignations, for investigations. Nobody knows where it will end.
But with so much that is uncertain, this much is certain: the Jesus who lived for us, who died for us, who gave us himself in his Body and Blood—the Jesus we ourselves will draw closer to in just a few moments— is with us.
That fervent woman in India knew in her heart and in her bones that he dwelled within those around her. But that is just the beginning.
He not only lives in us when we receive the Eucharist. He lives through us—in every prayer we whisper, every act of mercy we share, every sacrifice we make in his name, fulfilling his command to “love one another.”
This is what makes us the Body of Christ.
What is the Catholic Church?
Look around you, in front of you, behind you.
There is your answer.
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