Boo!

Happy Friday the 13th

I went to bed early last night. I considered letting the world know I wouldn’t be leading our novena, but my Lord said not to worry about it. A more adult version of me would have tried to make sure that nobody would wonder if I couldn’t hold to my commitment. But I know I can. I held my first commitment to God, who told me to rest, and to love myself as my neighbor.

I am exhausted with work in the vineyard, but I am well. I’m sure you’re tired too. The news is a lot right now. There are too many things to keep track of, and the stories keep getting wilder. On the one hand, the powerful seemed to be getting everything they ask for. Why are they getting nothing they wanted? Meanwhile the meek seem to be getting nothing from those in power. So how am I getting everything I ever wanted?

Our late Pope Francis reminded us that God doesn’t tire of forgiving us; we tire of asking for forgiveness. This is true of all the gifts our Father wants to bestow on us. What are the deepest desires of your heart? What have you hoped and prayed for? What have you brought to your King with a full and sincere heart, detached from expectations, knowing your benevolent King wishes to satisfy your every desire?

Perhaps not much. Perhaps you fear too much that God would find you presumptuous, as you would if someone came to you with so bold a request. But you have only shed light on the state of your own heart, not the Sacred Heart.

Do you believe in the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God? Have you encountered Him?

I have, in the deepest darkest pits, in the dead silent abyss of abuse, where the signs of the sacraments were, at best, turned upside down and, at worst, stripped away entirely. But God does not abandon his children. And while I have been the greatest of sinners, the lowliest of his servants, I have been his most loyal faithful servant. I have kept the faith when everything in my body told me not to. I have kept my faith when I had nothing else left, and every feeling in me said none of this is real. Faith alone suffices; everything else will follow.

The news around the Epstein files is especially exhausting. As you might be starting to wake up to, sexual abuse of children is widespread. When men play like gods on this earth, and have already won all the monopoly money, sexual exploitation of children becomes the ultimate prize. As with all of us, when you reach the highest heights of your world, the only fix left for you is death. You will either allow death to fix you, or you will use death to get your fix.

On either side of this ideological battle, survivors are pawns, just as we have been since the scandals first broke. Whether you sympathize with us, are angry at others on our behalf, or even wish to see all of the abusers and enablers brought to justice, you likely share one attribute with all of the people you hate: we’re still objects to you.

We are people to be ignored or heard, buried or advocated for. The listening and advocacy are good but they are not enough. At the same time, there’s not much more that you can do.

Some of you have already wrestled with these questions: if the Church is so corrupt, and the insitutional elements are continuing to follow the models of the world vis-à-vis the powerful and vulnerable, am I helping or hurting? In what ways am I participating in a system where I am complicit in the practices of abuse? How do we heal this world? How can we all find healing in the Church?

The answer we give ourselves is so typically Catholic™: offset it by more good than bad. “The structures may be corrupt, and I may be adding to the harm, so I will do more good than harm.” But this is a coward’s reassurance. You rest not in the security of a benevolent Father but an exacting Judge, who will weigh your good against your bad. But tell me, what good have you effected in this world? What gift did you give the Church and the people of God that He didn’t give you first? Your one venial sin that you committed in your life is a debt to Infinite Goodness that you could never possibly repay.

So maybe we remove ourselves from the Church, or instead we choose to remove ourselves from impure places, impure people. But you cannot even do that, for you yourself are corrupt. And even you have to take a shit.

So what then can be done? We can start with remembering that we are not sanctified by the Law, but by Love. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. The externals, the things that we cling to, are not the point. They are meant to point us beyond. We forget that everything we encounter is a sign meant to point us to Him, and that no sin is allowed in God’s plan unless it would bring about a greater good. This includes, most especially, our cross.

The grotesqueness of the cross has been lost. So thoroughly scandalous was the image of God nailed naked to a tree that Paul spoke of it as a stumbling block for the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles. Who would bring up crucifixion, let alone boast of it? To put God in the hands of the Romans to be executed like that feels like blasphemy. It would be, if we expected it from him. But his Sacred Heart revealed a deeper love, what He was willing to do for us.

So what is He to do to save this world now? Let us daydream.

What if… the greatest scandal of the Church, the place of its greatest pain, is the antidote? What if our Lord chose in the fullness of time to bring salvation to the world by entering into the world through this child sacrifice? What if the Second Coming was never a return of Jesus the Palestinian coming down from the sky on clouds, but was theosis reaching the world through its clouds? God will not save us without us; has his kingdom been waiting for 2,000 years because it requires all of us, every one of God’s children, to be conformed to Him? Then the Body of Christ will be here. Then the New Jerusalem. The days of the King.

But hey, I’m not a trained theologian. I’m not a trained anything. I’ve got a few credits of college courses and no high school diploma. My only pieces of paper in this life are restaurant certifications. I just like to dream. And Dad loves it.

The signs and the laws are not the point; they point beyond themselves to a Truth that cannot be contained. That Truth is that we are unconditionally loved and we are invited, for our own sakes, to unconditionally love everyone. We need healing, and there can be no healing without the Truth. This includes the truth of abuse. Or do you think that Jesus was not with me when my priest touched me when I was 9? Do you think He was far away as I lived with these secrets in silence, while my sense of self, of others, and of God was warped by the trauma of continued silence? I can tell you He was there the whole time.

I ask you: what do you think you would do for your most precious child if it were me? If the conventional means that your other Catholic children couldn’t work for me anymore, would you still make yourself known to me? Would you not make yourself even more clear in your words, as God has done for me with his living Word? Would you not adopt other signs from their world, even the grotesque ones, if only to help him understand who you are and how deeply he is loved? Would your heart not break as you watched him fall into a pattern of exploitation, and would you not extend all the mercy you could because you knew he really was trying his best?

And what wrath would you feel towards the people who took that innocence? What anger would you righteously exact on all who would take advantage of a child precisely because of their goodness? Shall I fetch you a millstone?

I would also recommend reading Dilexi Te, particularly paragraphs 99-102, which speak of the poor and marginalized not being objects but subjects, capable of creating their own culture. What would a culture even look like that rose out of the virgin martyrs of clergy sexual abuse, born from the holy innocents of child sacrifice? Let’s find out together.

---

We will continue our Novena for Abuse in the Church tonight, starting at 9 eastern. We are reading My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, by Dawn Eden Goldstein. Chapter 3 is titled The Love That Suffers: Sharing in Christ’s Passion, with St. Gemma Galgani and St. Sebastian. We’ll then have a short break and check in with the chat before beginning Chapter 4, titled The Love That Transforms: Learning the true meaning of spiritual childhood with St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I hope you can join us!