Catholic Synod - some thoughts

 

These are just some of my thoughts on some of the questions in the synod.

1. What is my dream for the Church? 

2. To achieve this dream, what do we need to stop doing? 

3. What are we doing that needs to be developed or done differently?

The church accepted me and took me in when I was a sinner but she didn’t leave me there to die in my sin.

The church has to represent the highest form of reverence, truth, holiness, faith, hope and love possible. She has to be a beacon. A light shining on a hill, a witness and a contradiction to the world.

To do that we need, as the mystical body of Christ, to love the sinner, to welcome the exiled and the lost, to provide shelter to the wounded and homeless as the Good Samaritan did but we aren’t to leave them where they are. Jesus never leaves anyone, where they are. He transforms, cleanses and restores them to their true dignity and worth and He gives them the uncompromising truth of Himself.

There needs to be a stark difference between the church and the world. The church is to be set apart as it says in scripture: 

“’Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;”

I was homeless, I was an addict. When I first came to church I received communion while still living in sin with my fiancé. I didn’t know what I was doing. But God knew and He didn’t leave me in that place. 

I pray that the church will never deviate from Christ’s teaching and the richness of the scriptures and traditions inspired by The Holy Spirit. 

The Carthusians are the most ascetic of all religious, they live in silence as hermits under one rule and their liturgy has never changed through the centuries. Their motto is ‘though the world turns, the cross stands firm.’

God changes not. 

We love people best when we love them so much, we want the best for them. The best is always the truth. As St Edith Stein said, ‘do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.’

The church should lift people out of the mire and confusion of worldly relativism and into the clarity of sacred truth.

As my ten year old said when I told her I was coming here to discuss the church’s direction: ‘God wrote us the laws so we don’t have to.’

The simple faith of a child.

I think one of the beautiful ways of revealing that truth to people is through liturgy. 

Imagine, coming in from the noise of the world with all its distractions and egoism into the prayerful silence of communion with God and a liturgy which reflects the beauty and truth of heaven itself. 

Everyone, even the priest, facing God, pointing to God where all our help comes.

The Holy Mass should never be mundane, filled with secular music and philosophy and everyday conversation but rather a sacred, set apart, holy sanctuary for our souls. 

I have recently, started to attend Latin mass. The children, especially are deeply effected by the reverence of the Latin mass and love it. It speaks to their souls and gives them something set apart that the world doesn’t offer.

Speaking as someone who was once on the outside, who thought all religions were equally true, who as a result, dabbled in the occult and was on a path to destruction if not for Jesus and The Grace of God,  I think we serve those on the periphery best when we offer them not just a bed for the night but a forever home.

And not a basic, utilitarian flat either but a heavenly mansion filled with all the richness of the Faith.

Let’s make their welcome home like that of The Father in the prodigal son.

We need the ring, the robe and the fatted calf.

Truth, Mercy and the most Holy and the beauty of the traditional liturgy of the mass to provide food for the journey.