Holy Saturday

This has been a tough week for Catholics. There's no joy in reliving the scandals of the past and it's been profoundly frustrating to watch people who hate the Church leverage its sins to advance a secular agenda that hurts not just Catholics, but all Christians. When we turn people away from God, it benefits no one.

One of the best lay Catholic writers I know is a woman named Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs under the name The Anchoress. She offers the following wisdom in, all of all places, the National Public Radio website:

The question has come my way several times in the past week: "How do you maintain your faith in light of news stories that bring light to the dark places that exist within your church?"

When have darkness and light been anything but co-existent? How do we recognize either without the other?

I remain within, and love, the Catholic Church because it is a church that has lived and wrestled within the mystery of the shadow lands ever since an innocent man was arrested, sentenced and crucified, while the keeper of "the keys" denied him, and his first priests ran away. Through 2,000 imperfect — sometimes glorious, sometimes heinous — years, the church has contemplated and manifested the truth that dark and light, innocence and guilt, justice and injustice all share a kinship, one that waves back and forth like wind-stirred wheat in a field, churning toward something — as yet — unknowable.

She's right, of course. The Church has employed theologians for 2,000 years and will do so for 2,000 more, God willing. We are all, whether Catholic or Protestant, always going to fall short of knowing. It's the reason why we have priests and ministers, seminaries and divinity schools. We want to understand the mystery, to grasp the meaning of the Cross, to fully understand the victory over sin that Jesus gave us through the Resurrection. It's more than we can really understand.

And simultaneously while we know there is evil in the world, we are often disastrously slow to recognize it. It is rare when you get to see the face of evil, because evil almost always wears a mask. Sometimes it is a mask of a sneer, sometimes it is a worried expression, sometimes it is a seemingly sincere smile. We are all sinners and goodness and evil can flow through us at the same time.

Psalm 23 refers to the dark valley. In a real sense I've felt as though we have walked through some very dark valleys in recent days, for a number of reasons. I've lost a number of people who have mattered in my life during the last few months. I've watched my government make a series of decisions that seem, at best, misguided, and at worst catastrophic. Yet today is a beautiful day in Minneapolis, cool and clear. Tomorrow I will join my fellow Catholics in celebrating the greatest victory and gift we can ever hope to receive. And my prayer for this day is that we will all work a little harder to recognize that while evil is everywhere, God's grace is always available if we are willing to accept it. This world is a dark valley but there is light. And on this day, as we keep the Easter vigil, God's grace is all around us. And God is calling us to His loving embrace.