"I Love This Church"

Another down side to moving is all those boxes of "stuff" I have carried from rectory to rectory to rectory.  I am all too slowly working my way through boxes and boxes of books, papers, magazines, letters, financial records, prayer cards, liturgy worship aids, Steeler paraphernalia, gifts, paintings, mementos and photographs.  A nice byproduct of this excavation into the detretus of my past is finding things I had forgotten.

Here's an example of what I mean.  This is a prayer attributed to Walter Burghardt, S.J., medieval scholar, long-time editor of Theological Studies, co-founder of the Preaching the Just Word retreats, and author of more than a dozen books of homilies for many occasions.  Father Burghardt died about two years ago at the age of 95.

I Love This Church

In the course of a half century,

I have seen more Christian corruption

than you have read of.

I have tasted it.

I have been reasonable corrupt myself.

And yet, I love this church,

this living, pulsing, sinning people of God

with a crucifying passion.

Why?

For all the Christian hate,

I exerience here a community of love.

For all the institutional idiocy,

I find here a tradition of reason.

For all the individual repressions,

I breathe here an air of freedom.

For all the fear of sex,

I discover here the redemption of my body.

In an age so inhuman,

I touch here tears of compassion.

In a world so grim and humorless,

I share here rich joy and earthy laughter.

In the midst of death,

I hear an incomparable stress on life.

For all the apparent absence of God,

I sense here the real presence of Christ.

Walter Burghardt, S.J.