Saturday, August 28, 2010

How baffling you are, oh Church

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! 
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! 
I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. 
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. 
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. 
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. 


No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. 
And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? 
I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,
for they are the same faults I carry in me. 

And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. 
I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else.


From Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes

1 comment:

the dogfood said...

totally understand this.