Let me be a laywoman in peaceBlessed and shameless youthChulapos, babies and the luck of being born in MadridThere are many things about the functioning of the Church that I do not understand. Starting with Latin or what happens in the conclaves. By not understanding, I don't even understand the bureaucracy that you sometimes encounter when you want to do something like get married. There are times when you don't know if you are talking to your parish priest or to an official of the town hall of Parla.
There are also many things about content that I find it hard to understand. Or more than understanding, knowing how to adjust my life to them. I find it hard to turn the other cheek, and what about forgiving up to seventy times seven? Or about giving the mantle and the tunic, when I take the blanket off my husband at night, and I haven't even been there for a year. married.
Start to lose fear
The reality is that there are many things about the Church that I don't understand. But I think it's okay. I imagine that the apostles did not understand much at the beginning either, but Jesus trusted them anyway. He trusted them so much that He entrusted them with the task of spreading the mission of a Church that even they did not fully understand. But he knew that they loved him with a sincere heart, and that, at least in the beginning, was enough.
However, in that beginning is the key. The apostles were not afraid of that Church which they did not understand because they loved Jesus, whom, by the way, they did not fully understand either. But they learned to enlarge their hearts and adopted His measure. They chose to stop doing things the way they wanted and the way it suited them in their minds and to accept Jesus' plan completely.
The Church and our fears
Today there are many people who are afraid of the Church. There are people who blur the message of Christ and try to turn it into something else: into a musical, into an orientalist mysticism that melts into everything (and ends up in nothing), into an activism without a north... And I, who at first thought that this was done out of ignorance, have come to realize that what lies behind this is fear: fear of a Christ they do not understand, of a Church that challenges us, in the best sense of the word.
There is even a fear of commitment, that fear of which we Catholics accuse other members of society, as if we were not also part of it. And because we are afraid of real commitment, we confuse the church with a social club that we go to once a week.
And since we are afraid we excuse ourselves in those things that we do not understand in order to make another Church to our measure, another "adapted" Gospel. The Judge is merciful, but he is still a judge and there are a few things that he has made very clear.
And because we are afraid, we say that there is no more pope. And we think that the The Vatican in reality it is a covert mafia. And we identify Christ with a yogi instead of confessing that he is God... And by so much distorting what is around us, we believe that we cover up the fear of recognizing that Jesus has a message that, if we do not have a heart open to grace, is beyond us.
Fixing the gaze
Maybe I am wrong and, indeed, more than fear there is ignorance. Or even an active intervention of Satan. The truth is that I don't know... I don't quite understand it. But I prefer to start with the clear part, that of the message well explained in the Gospel by Christ himself. I prefer to start by trusting the Church, even if sometimes she tells me things in Latin, but that's okay because we are in the 21st century and there are wonderful automatic translators.
I would like to begin with the part where, if you trust in Christ, you lose your fear of this Church that you do not fully understand. But it is His, much more than the Pope's, the parish priest's and mine. Beyond conspiracies and confusing doctrines, beyond fears projected in distorted messages, I fully trust that Jesus chose well that stone that did not understand anything but on which He decided to build His Church. Focusing our gaze on Christ, accepting his message in its entirety and the grace that comes with it, begins to diminish that fear of a Church that, I admit, I often do not understand.
