12 Sep Tue
Faithful to the Church.
The Church is big, but, when not being Christian, aspires to be powerful, she becomes smaller. But when she aspires to be small, she grows.
In Easter, we were invited to contemplate the extraordinary fate of matter, resurrected and assumed, “bodily,” into Heaven. For that is the only possible interpretation of the event.
We can take it, or leave Christianity altogether, as modern Western man has been doing. For, instead of the Resurrection and Ascension, he believes in that everything that happens has a plain, material explanation, and that faith in bigness and power cannot be disturbed.
We notice that persons do not resurrect, and do not ascend. This was what the near contemporaries of Christ also concluded, when religious claims were made in their presence. Then as now, one would have to be a member of a tiny minority to believe it; the numbers were small. This is our Faith.
Then as now, the public is warned not to go against “science.” For science – computer screens, solar arrays, spinning windmills – is obvious, they say. And what is not obvious is not science. The world just happened, and everything in it evolved, except for those things that seem not to.
Likewise, the Church deteriorates if ever she becomes in effect an administrative bureaucracy, and men cling to her only for the sake of their careers. She would become a Church that actually discourages total self-giving, and martyrdom (“witnessing”), and like all political and “materialist” agencies she would make her mission health, comfort, and convenience. For these are the things of this world, which never did require heavenly promotion.
In real science, and real life, what is least expected is likeliest to happen, in the moment when everyone expects something dull. The truth at times surprises us for its simplicity. And God is simple.
Thus, faithful to the Church, the Body of Christ, which includes us, imperfect sinners, we all should be; as Saint Augustine said: "It is better to limp along ON the way, than to walk with strength OFF the way."
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