The readings for this second of the Easter Sundays are a nice
combination of idealism and realism. The description of the earliest
Christian community that we heard in the reading from the Acts of the
Apostles is so idealistic as to seem implausible if not incredible. The
community of believers lived in peace, we are told, and they shared
everything in common. Everything! They kept nothing for themselves, they
met together daily for prayer and Eucharist, and they witnessed many
signs and wonders done by the Apostles. No wonder we are told that the
community grew by leaps and bounds!
The note of realism
comes, of course, in the gospel story of doubting Thomas and I dare say
that story may ring a bit more true for us than the idyllic one from
Acts, we who sometimes find ourselves struggling to hold onto our faith,
struggling to believe! But both stories are true and we need both in
order to keep our balance as we strive to live as faithful disciples of
Christ.
The ideal Church and the
real Church, the Church full of faith and the Church dogged by doubt,
the Church eager to listen and the Church bent only on teaching, the
Church made one by the Eucharist and the Church divided by controversy,
the “imperfectly perfect church” I like to call it - this holy Church of
sinners is the Church in which we meet the Risen Jesus as Thomas did:
meet him, touch him, and find ourselves touched and transformed by him.
And, my friends, this
holy Church of sinners is the only Church there is. At times we glory in
its goodness and at other times we are disheartened by its flaws. In our
more enlightened and honest moments we are not surprised by its ups and
downs, its glories or its failures because they are our own ups and
downs, our own glories and failures. For, as you know, the Church is not
some abstract entity hanging out there someplace; it’s not some
out-of-touch impersonal institution way off in Rome. No, the Church is
people: holy people, sinful people, people weighed down by the spirit of
evil, people led by the Spirit of God. People like us! We are the Church
and whenever we come together to pray - and to serve - we touch the
Divine Mercy that flows so freely to us in the healing grace of the
Church’s sacraments, the Divine Mercy that lives, however imperfectly,
in all those we serve.
Dear friends, in just a
few moments we will stand to profess our faith. We should be alert to
what we say because the Creed, with all its soaring idealism, is our way
of saying, along with the all-too-human and doubting Thomas, “My Lord
and my God!”
Father Michael G. Ryan
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