21/08/2023

I have always considered the Church to be what she claims to be; what she describes herself as, "The Mystical Body of Christ", God on Earth. There was no "fudging"; her teaching was "what had been heard from the lips of Jesus" and repeated by the Apostles and preserved in the hierarchical structure that has lasted up to today. The whole purpose of the Church is to pass on the forgiveness won by Our Lord and to help all people to become holy on earth to reach the perfection of heaven.

I went to work as a teacher overseas in 1964. At about that time a candidate for Canonization Fr. Aloysius Schwartz  went alone to Korea. 

In Istanbul we were shocked by the vast crowds of people and the poverty of some. The "poor are always with you" has cushioned us against the injustices that give rise to poverty; it seems to tell us that we cannot do much about poverty but it is a Christian duty to alleviate its results. Jesus loves the poor.

In Busan Fr Schwartz was met with the abysmal poverty that modern warfare had inflicted on what had been a highly cultivated society for hundreds of years before the Normans had conquered England or America had been colonised. He saw ragged bundles of children and beggars dying on the streets and immediately started to do something about it.

He did not have the wealth of the Vatican behind him but became incardinated in the Korean Diocese of Busan and shared the poverty that surrounded him. He saw the suffering of Christ repeated in the broken bodies and the helplessness of "Eli, Eli lama sabachtani" in the eyes of the inhabitants of those shanty towns.

The young man went sorrowfully away. The widow gave her all as did Father Schwartz and all the unknown saints who even today don't just see Jesus on the altar or in the Tabernacle but, as he told us, in the person to whom they give food and drink. 

I am still "going sorrowfully away"as is our Church which if she were to be true to Christ would be trying to divest herself of riches not to protect the patrimony of St Peter but to do the will of Our Father.

Dear Lord, forgive me my sins and help me to become poor so that I can be with you. May Mary pray with Aloysius and all the saints that even at this age I and all sinners on earth and in Purgatory may be open to receive the forgiveness won by your suffering on Calvary and by your daily repeated suffering with the poor on earth.