Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
January 24, 2016
Spiritual Ponderings
Loving The Church

I hope the last few weeks have been helpful in your spiritual growth and I hope that you like me have learned more about loving the Church that we have and not the one we want. As we continue to examine ways in which we can learn to love the Church that we have I would like to offer three more ideas.

8. Repair Attempts
A repair attempt is any time that two people in the midst of arguing remind themselves that they are on the same side. I find that taking time to remind myself that God loves me and I desire to love Him helps me to not only put up with the Church but to embrace her evermore. As St. Paul discovered, persecuting the Church is persecuting Christ (Acts 9) and Jesus came into the world not to condemn me, but so that I might have life eternal (John 3:16).

I often find that when I am hurt by one part of the Church that there is another part of the Church there to help me heal. When I am hurt by someone who is dealing with their own weaknesses and struggles, I find God has already dispatched others to heal these wounds. The important thing is to make sure this leads to legitimate healing and not just us surrounding ourselves with other like minded people.

This suggestion also reminds me of the need to stop every once in a while and make sure that everyone knows that we are on the same team. It is alright to argue about where to put the advent wreath only if in the end we all realize that our relationships with others are more important than where the advent wreath goes.

Just because someone else disagrees with me does not mean that they disrespect me.

9. Service
Sometimes overcoming my dislike for something in the Church is as simple as getting over myself and stretching myself by performing some type of service for example helping with the parish fish fry or helping out at a soup kitchen. The more I focus on loving and serving others the more my problems seem to shrink, disappear, and melt away.

Mother Teresa is someone who always reminds me of what is truly important: “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.”
A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs, and he wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come up with the game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox. The next day God fed the fox by the means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God’s greatness and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all that I need.” He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door when he heard a voice say, “O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Stop imitating the disable fox and follow the example of the tiger.”

10. Positive People
Finally the best thing I can do to love the Church that I am in is to be with others who love the Church for who she is. As married couples must remember that their spouse is a gift from God and that they had agreed to overlook their spouses faults because no one is perfect, so we must remind ourselves that the Church is an awesome gift from God and that the imperfections that we perceive in her were things that we agree to overlook because of the love that we promised to give her.

One of the major differences between Catholics and Protestants is that as Catholics we believe we are saved as a people and not as an individual.