Remember the cross and the resurrection.
The upcoming Vatican conference on “health” is a scandal.
The featured speakers range from high paid public health officials and CEOs of multi billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, to New Age practitioners and writers, political activists, a former model, and an NFL star. Many are outright proponents of abortion.
And Jesus wept.
Vatican City *should* be a city set on a hill, a light unto nations, a beacon of courage and hope in a secular world gone mad with fear and spiritual darkness.
Instead, it’s hosting a secular conference that would be at home in any progressive government in any western country of the world.
(Do *not* get me started on God and Adam wearing gloves in a bizarre profanation of Michelangelo’s sacred fresco. Lord have mercy.)
To the human eye, it appears as if the Church is imploding, attacked from outside by evil after being weakened by evil from within and abandoned by many of Her faithful.
And then I remembered what the crucifixion must have looked like.
God the Son was scourged, mocked, tortured, and killed. Those who loved Him abandoned Him, while those who hated Him believed they had won.
But we know the truth. None of what was done to Him, from within or from without, meant that Jesus wasn’t our Messiah, the Son of God. It meant that while our sins are great, His atonement was still greater.
And just as the Bride of Christ is being pummeled, both from within and without, it does not mean that the Catholic Church is not the true Church. It means we are being lovingly reminded by our Heavenly Father that there is much to atone for.
The greater the suffering, the greater the glory to God.
So do not lose heart, friends. We have the honor of being humiliated like our Lord. Spit upon like our Lord. Mocked like our Lord. And this kind of suffering bears much fruit for the Kingdom of God.
When you’re discouraged, remember the cross and remember the resurrection.
Thank you, o Good and Loving God, for the opportunity to feel a tiny fraction of the pain You felt during Your Passion. Take this pain and use it to convert sinners and to heal Your Church.
+AMDG+
