If Christ trusts the Church, so can we

14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Is 66:10–14
Second Reading: Gal 6:14–18
 Gospel Reading: Lk 10:1–12, 17–20

Traditionally, we can substitute the word Church for Jerusalem in the Psalms and the Old Testament readings. It is the Church — “that Jerusalem which is above,” whom Christ “loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “It is she whom he unites to himself by an unbreakable alliance, and whom he constantly nourishes and cherishes.”

Therefore, we can say this Sunday, “Rejoice with the Church and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her — that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast.”

Is this how we see the Church? Perhaps we see her more as our own parish — with a building that may depress us, a priest who may bore us, a congregation that may sing flat, and laws that say “no” to everything we want to do.

Perhaps we forget that God has “put all things under Christ’s feet and made him, thus exalted, Head of the Church, which is his body.” Through him, “the whole body grows, and with the proper functioning of the members joined firmly together by each supporting ligament, builds itself up in love.”

The Church is not just a human institution. True, it has you and me in it, so it is finite, weak, sinful, and unattractive. However, it has Christ as its Head, so it is infinite, strong, true, good, and perfect.

Many people see only the human members of the Church, who often let them down. However, even they are far better than we sometimes realize.

First, there is the man Jesus, who was sinless. He never let us down: he healed, consoled, forgave, and comforted or strengthened us.

Second, there is Mary, who was completely without fault.

Third, there are the saints.

To the canonized saints we may add the millions of “ordinary souls” who have gone before us with little or no recognition. We may also add the many good people we know in our own lives — people who try to do God’s will and usually succeed.

Despite all the good there is around us, we often see only the bad. We are often guilty of what the Catechism calls rash judgment: the assumption, without sufficient foundation, that someone else is morally at fault. To avoid this mistake, the Catechism says, we should be careful always to interpret other people’s thoughts, words, and actions favourably, as far as possible.

As for people who see the Church only through us, we have the awesome responsibility of reflecting Christ to them.

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Christ sends out 70 disciples to prepare his way. The harvest is rich, but the labourers few, he warns.

This Gospel is not just a call to consecrated life. (It is that, and, God knows, we desperately need men and women who will dedicate themselves to God completely in this way.) However, the vocation to be holy — to reflect Christ, to attract people to the Church — is everyone’s vocation: Christ’s call to individuals, couples, families, and communities.

We should love the Church in a concrete way: Pope Leo XIV, Archbishop Richard Smith, our own parish priest. However imperfect they may be as humans, they are our link with Christ, our Head, through word and sacrament.

We should have confidence in the Church, for Christ promised that he would be with it always and send his Holy Spirit to make us grow in the truth. In fact, he trusted the Church enough to promise in advance to bind what she binds and to loose what she looses. If he had that kind of confidence, surely we can have the same!

Like St. Paul, we boast of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ — but it is through the Church that Christ communicates to us what his crucifixion won for us.