I am going to let the good Abbot Gueranger tell us about this truth. He puts it in such a wonderful way, I am going to copy it. I hope he doesn't mind.
'Let us leave the Jews to hurry on their own ruin; let us return to the Church, which, at the same time, is rising up, so grand and so beautiful, on the corner-stone that had been rejected by the Synagogue. Because of the absence of this stone, which the builders of Sion had not the wisdom to recognize as the basis indispensably necessary to their city, Jerusalem falls in Judea, but reappears, more than ever beauteous, on the hills, whither Cephas, prince of the Apostles, has carried her everlasting foundation. Set firmly on the divine rock, she shall no longer fear the violence of the billows and winds, when they storm against her walls. False prophets, and all the workers of lies, who had so successfully sapped the walls of the ancient, will not leave the new Jerusalem in peace; for our Lord had plainly said: "It is necessary that scandals should come"; and the Apostle (Paul), speaking of heresy (that greatest of all scandals), said: "There must
be heresies in order that they who approved may be made manifest."
Indeed, for each individual Christian, as for the Church at large, the security of the spiritual building depends primarily on the firmness of the foundation, which is faith. The Holy Ghost will NOT build on a foundation that is unsound and unsafe. When, especially, He is to lead a soul to the higher degrees of divine union, He exacts from her, as the first condition, that her faith, too, be above the average, --a Faith, that is, with heroism enough to fight successfully those battles which brace the soul, and so render her worthy of light and love. In every stage of the Christian life, however, it is faith that provides love with its enduring and substantial nourishment; it is faith that gives to the virtues their development never goes beyond the measure of her faith. The capaciousness of faith, and its ever-growing plenitude, and its certified conformity with truth, these are the guarantees of the progress which will be made by a just man; whereas all such holiness as affects to be guided by a faith which is cramped or false is holiness of a very dubious kind, and one that is exposed to most fearful illusions.
It was, therefore, a good and a wholesome thing that faith should be put to the test, for it grows brighter and stronger under trial....'
I only wish I could say it better.
Lord, please have mercy on us, and help us to find what we aren't hearing in Your Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment