For Today

After a long (but very enjoyable) conversation about the difficulties that the Catholic Church is dealing with, the lady I was speaking with said, "I just want to go back to a time, any time, before the Church was dealing with problems like this." I said to her, "Yes, that would be nice. The garden of Eden was beautiful, wasn't it? Even the garden, however, had a snake in it." There was never a time since the fall where there were no problems.

Down deep, every one of us wants to be able to live without having to worry about bad clergy, moral compromise and doctrinal confusion. It is not necessarily a bad thing, because it usually stems from a desire for Heaven (which is a good thing). It only becomes a bad thing when we get uptight about it and begin to think (even quietly) that God made a mistake in putting us here.

I watched a video the other day by a Catholic who mentioned going to Rome recently and experiencing a terrible sense of evil in numerous locations. She said it was palpably oppressive. Her suspicions were supported by a local Priest she met who told her that Satan had snuck into "every corner". She may have been overreacting, and the Priest may have been exaggerating about what he was experiencing; and maybe not.

Many people in times past have had similar experiences (St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi, etc.), and we have been given the great blessing to be lights and witnesses (and maybe martyrs) in this day and age. The one problem with longing for a "more peaceful" time is that it can make us disconnect with the present. You are here--right now--because God wants you here. You have a role to fulfill in the Kingdom of God. By His grace you can do so.