Right now, in our School of Community, we are re-reading Recognizing Christ, since we finished the work on the first lesson of the exercises. I have been struck once again by Fr. Giussani’s insistence that what happened to John and Andrew in their encounter with Christ is the same thing that happens to us today, in our own lives. I had a very real experience of this in light of all of the tragic and disturbing scandals coming to light once more within the Church. The grand jury report on the dioceses of Pennsylvania came out on the eve of the Assumption. The next morning, with so many others for the holy day of obligation, I was at mass. Our pastor was the celebrant. He started his homily by saying that his sister had called him the previous night to see how he was doing. His sister had gone through a terrible divorce years prior, and he told her that he know now what it felt like to be betrayed by the one that you gave all of yourself to, that you trusted to have your back. He stood there, honest and open, as one of us; as a man unafraid to face his children and admit that he’s angry, that he too feels betrayed, that he will one day ask God why he had to allow a freedom capable of failing so miserably. He had the courage to stand there and say everything that we have been thinking, that our hearts have been crying. To see one who prostrated himself on his ordination day, promising obedience to the bishop and his successors, entrusting all of his life to them for the service of the Church, stand in front of his congregation and identify with the hurt, the brokenness, the confusion and pain that we are all feeling, was a beautiful witness of Christ’s face, of His living Presence.

But then, without dismissing the very real darkness that we all have to face right now, he also spoke of hope: the hope that held Mary and John at the foot of the Cross when everyone else fled. And he thanked us for being there, on that day, saying that our presence there on such a day, in the face of such darkness, was the witness of Christ’s Face to him, was what allowed him to keep believing that the capital “C” Church has not been abandoned and is greater and deeper than the darkest, most grievous failures of some of the concrete figures that do not show us Christ’s face. I couldn’t help thinking of Giussani’s words, and of the fact that we believe in a Christ that is Present, here and now, not a historical fact of yesterday. And no matter how many, even in places of authority and power, fail us grievously, there will always remain concrete faces through which He continues to come to us in His Church: whether the witness of the fatherhood of this pastor, or the testimony of a community that still came together for the Eucharist.

We stood after his homily and professed the Creed together, and I have never been more moved by that action of professing one faith together as a community than in that moment: because our faith is not grounded on the moral coherency even of our bishops, but upon an Event that is still happening, that is still alive and present in my life, today. And ultimately, I see that unless my belonging and remaining within the Church is grounded on this reality, it cannot be sustained.

Siobhan, Falls Church, USA