Dedication to the Church
The following was taken from the Magnificat meditation for November 9, 2017
“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively:
“The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by the saints, by people, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality.”
“Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered….”
“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. It will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. It will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices it built in its palmy days. As the number of its adherents diminishes, so will it lose many of its social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of its individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry, and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly.”
“But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find its essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at its center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.
In faith and prayer it will again recognize its true center, and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.”
» Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Thank you for this post. I have read where Pope Emeritus Benedict spoke about the Church which is now going through
a purification and will emerge smaller but purer. I believe Mother Mary was purported to say something to this effect to.
May God gives us all the strength and courage to keep close to Him and His Blessed Mother, in these days of special challenge for the Church. Amen.
I have a son studying to enter the priesthood, and it hurts me to see his office and his way of life not becoming what he thought it might be. As Marxists infiltraed many Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church is the last one standing, yet it, too has become corrupted; the number of anullments has increased, diminishing the sacredness of what God intended to be the only sacrament, marriage. The institution of marriage is being corrupted by the ‘inflation’ of annullments. Confession has been ‘inflated,’ as priests increasingly don’t want a story, but only to know our sin. The perception of the lost kingdom of heaven by church leaders and many parishioners has resulted in a deflection to aplications of love and justice. But these energies are not what our souls need-the need for transcendence, and such substitutions will lead to rules like China.