Catholic

“Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honour him.” (Psalm 91:14-15).

Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Vik Muniz)

The other day, a friend of mine asked me if I would ever consider not being a Catholic.

My answer was direct and immediate.  NO.

Even when I was most severely tried and even when I most doubted God, I still – even then when I was so miserably unhappy and unaccepting of God’s Will for me – even then, I was Catholic and thought of myself as Catholic.  Now, at the time, I might not have been feeling very happy about being a Catholic, but it did not mean that I did not feel Catholic or experience the meaning of being a Catholic.

When my little baby died before he was even born, I was devastated and I was so angry with God, I wish I had the words to express my anger, and all the while that I spoke to God – knowing that God is alive and in control – I was never in denial about being a Catholic.  In fact, I just considered myself a very angry Catholic!

It occurs to me now – as I reflect on that experience of grief and doubt, that the primary issue at hand was my inability to accept God’s Will because I was unwilling to be reconciled to the notion that God could simultaneously allow something terrible to happen and turn it to the good.  In other words, I got in my own way!

And I have been thinking about that today…

Saint Catherine of Siena said, “You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love.”

And I have been reflecting on how Catholicism is in its own way, a very real measure of love.  You see, as Saint Augustine says, “We are the holy Church. But I do not say ‘we’ as though to indicate only we who are here, you who have just been listening to me. I mean all of us who are here and by the grace of God faithful Christians in this church, that is, in this city; all those in this region, in this province, across the sea, all those in the whole world. Such is the Catholic Church, our true mother, the true spouse of so great a husband.”

In the Psalms we are told, “Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honour him.” (Psalm 91:14-15).

And there is such love in this – this coming together in universality – which is, of course, the true meaning of Catholicism…

And I have been thinking about that today.  Because it seems to me that the more I reflect on it, the more I come to understand, that God has taken me under His Holy Wing and consumed my in His Church, so that – despite all the human weaknesses we bring to it – I shall always be safe…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.