Earthen Vessels

Saturday December 7. 2019

      As I sat before the Blessed Sacrament this morning after opening my heart to Jesus I was contemplating what to pray on. The night before, after the latest news of yet another priest scandal, this one right in our own backyard, I picked up the copy of Bishop Barron’s Letter to a Suffering Church on my reading table. I had started it when it was first released last fall and never finished it, pushed aside by other pressing things to read. With a heavy heart I began from the beginning looking for something to sooth my own suffering heart.

      A few nights earlier a conversation broke out about this latest scandal at our class dinner. One of the women in our class is in the master’s pastoral ministry program at Ursuline and in conversation another member of our class said to her “You should just join our program.” A comment she shrugged off. As the discussion turned to this latest scandal it was at this point she felt compelled to tell us this is why she would never join our program. She could not be involved in a program associated with the Catholic Church. It broke my heart and I wish I had had the courage at the time to tell her what my thoughts were. This is exactly why I AM in the program. To stand in the gap between the church and the people of the church. To represent church in a positive light with love and joy, compassion and truth.  You’re either a part of the problem by judging and complaining about the situation or you’re part of the positive movement of solution. A challenging position these days.

       In his book Bishop Barron brings scripture into the discussion to try and shed light in some way to this travesty. One of the passages he shared that really struck me was in 2 Corinthians.

  “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;  Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” 2 Cor 4:7-10

I guess I never really understood that those earthen vessels are us. Those of us in the physical manifestation of the spirit of Christ.  Barron states in his chapter Why Should We Stay that “If we look around at the situation today, we see it; if we look back to the Scriptures, it is evident; if we survey the twenty centuries of Church history we cannot miss it. The vessels are all fragile and many of them are downright broken; but we don’t stay because of the vessels. We stay because of the treasure.”  The treasure that is our Catholic faith.

       He reminds us that the claims of Catholicism are “both compelling and beautiful.”  He reminds us these treasures speak of a Trinitarian God of love who sent us his son, who defeated sin and death when he rose on that third day and gave us the Holy Spirit. He reminds us of the tradition of the sacraments, the saints, the very way of holy life.  This treasure does not diminish by the vessel that carries it. We are all flawed, loved sinners and the treasure is our salvation.

       Per usual God’s words were right on time at mass. Proclaiming the Gospel according to Matthew Fr. Goodfellow reads “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few, so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  I stay for the treasure and to share the beauty of this treasure with others.