The Black Madonna loved me into Eastern Catholicism

As John Paul II said, this is what it means for the Church to be in solidarity with the modern world. Despite the Church having been colonized by this nation-state and that ideology and that other activist cause, the Church, of which Mary is a type, bears God in herself – the Greek word for this is ‘Theotokos,’ the God-bearer, which is as appropriate of a name for Mary as it is for the Church. Sure, this Church can be subject to the whims of iconoclasts, latinizers, nationalists, ethnic chauvinists, communists, and capitalists. But why do people join our Church? Because, simply put, we fall in love as with the Black Madonna, captivated by her eyes, her hand, her Son, his Gospel. To gaze upon her is to know that God loves us; to venerate her icon is to join in the Church’s solidarity with the ‘joys and hopes,’ as the Second Vatican Council put it, of the modern world. The Church does not offer an ideology because ideology is precisely the sword by which she is wounded. Instead, the Church offers the solidarity of a person, of participation into the life of the Three-Personed God, of the grace of the Lord Jesus who is God and Man, of the human possibility of holiness like the Most Holy Theotokos.