"I am in the Church because, despite everything, I believe that she is at the deepest level not our but precisely “his” Church. To put it concretely: It is the Church that, despite all the human foibles of the people in her, gives us Jesus Christ, and only through her can we receive him as a living, authoritative reality that summons and endows me here and now. …
This elementary acknowledgement has to be made at the start: Whatever infidelity there is or may be in the Church, however true it is that she constantly needs to be measured anew by Jesus Christ, still there is ultimately no opposition between Christ and Church. It is through the Church that he remains alive despite the distance of history, that he speaks to us today, is with us today as master and Lord, as our brother who unites us all as brethren.
And because the Church, and she alone, gives us Jesus Christ, causes him to be alive and present in the world, gives birth to him again in every age in the faith and prayer of the people, she gives mankind a light, a support, and a standard without which mankind would be unimaginable. Anyone who wants to find the presence of Jesus Christ in mankind cannot find it contrary to the Church but only in her."
--Pope Benedict XVI
As quoted in "On Fifteen Years A Catholic" by Carl E. Olson
Would that the standard could be lifted higher, shine more brightly, in this darkened world where sometimes the unimaginable is true... The church surely is us, needing to shine brightly...against our own darknesses, to become the radiant Bride.
ReplyDeleteWithout the light of Christ, "mankind would be unimaginable." Wow. So true.
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