It’s not just the shocked or amused stares that come with keeping an extremely active child still in a liturgy. This week, my dear friends were viciously smeared by LifeSite, a scandal rag that pretends to be more Catholic than the Pope. I’ve seen many good people defending my friends, and I’ve also seen pious-looking Catholics cheering that they’ve been humiliated, that Rebecca lost her job. This happened after a few weeks of escalating fights and cruelty online in several Catholic circles. The whole thing reminds me far too much of growing up on the Planet Charismatic and the things that happened when I got to Steubenville. I was too sick from my autoimmune flare-up to go to Mass for two weeks in a row, and it honestly felt like a relief. I felt nervous when I started recovering.
And there I was, in a church that was neither beautiful nor ugly, praying in a rite that’s grown unfamiliar, with my daughter fidgeting next to me in her Avengers t-shirt, staring at a page marked “Gospel.”
We should all approach the Gospel like a little child: reverently, but with full awareness that we can’t totally understand and are always getting it wrong. With full attention, we should sit at the Master’s feet and ponder His teachings, whether they pleased us or not, because we accept that these teachings are Gospel.
I stared up at the crucifix– unremarkable cast metal with the corpus looking clean and stoic. I wished it was a little more realistic. I wished I could see His suffering. There are infinite lessons to be learned from the Passion of Christ. I think that one of them is what the church is like– not the Church as Christ intended, the Church when she teaches, the Church as she will be in Heaven, but the church as we see one another on earth. The members of the Body of Christ hurt one another. They fight, over pointless things and weighty things, and they let the pointless and the weighty things be excuses for their lack of charity. They gossip and judge. They humiliate and take delight in others’ humiliation. They are racists and bigots of every kind. They neglect. They abuse. People are driven away from the Church. People have been driven to suicide. People have been tortured and killed.
People who bear the everlasting seal of Baptism have done these things to one another. We have to accept that, because it’s the truth. Through our fault, through our fault, through our most grievous fault, we have tortured the Body of Christ.
Our Lord’s precious Body is broken and torn, torn so that every movement was anguish and there wasn’t a sound place. His skin hung off in rags, as if the members of His body were at war with one another. It’s as though they hate each other and are trying to peel His flesh off bit by bit. Get out. We don’t want you here. You’re not a real member of the Body of Christ. You are too loud. You are ugly. You don’t speak the right language. You sin differently than we do. We don’t accept Gentiles. We don’t accept Slavs, blacks, Indians, migrants, Jews, poor white trash. You’re family isn’t big enough. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re a burden. You shock us. Your past is scandalous. We ought to throw you out of the house.
Last of all, they pierced His heart, and out ran blood and water.
He forgave them, and still does. He didn’t return to be crucified again, and abuse victims have no duty to return to their abusers to be hurt again. But He forgave them, and prayed that the Father would pardon them. If they come to Him, repentant, He will give them the Bread of Heaven at His Father’s table.
This is also Gospel.
I prayed the Lord’s prayer, earnestly. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I offered my hand to strangers at the kiss of peace. I received the Living God and was one in Christ with ever person who has ever come to that table.
The church had seemed neither beautiful nor ugly. Now, it was both.
(image via Pixabay)
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