Daily Reflection:
Saturday, July 11
My Friends,
Here are two “prayers” that I rely on whenever I am feeling “down” about the Church…
These words have gotten me through some difficult times…
Hope they will help you!
---Fr. Mike
The God Who Comes
--Carlo Carretto
How baffling you are, O Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more compromised and 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 to you,
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, and where would I go?
My Witness for the Church
--Rev. Bernard Haring, C.SS.R.
I love the Church because Christ loved it, loved it to the utmost extreme.
I love it even when I discover painful attitudes and structures,
which I do not find in harmony with the Gospel.
I love it as it is because Christ also loved me with all my imperfections,
with all my shadows and constantly gives me the first fruits of his Kingdom
so that my love may correspond to his eternal plan.
I experience the Church in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Christ and the Church with him remind me of all the
limitless evidence of love, grace and mercy.
In this the Church helps me to form a grateful memory.
If we open ourselves to this and gratefully remember all the
good which has flowed to us in the Church and constantly flows to us,
then we can and will all succeed in giving even the
suffering from the Church its place in the heart of Jesus.
