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 By Msgr. Charles Fink
As it is through Jesus that we most perfectly know God, so it is through the Church Jesus founded that we most perfectly know him. He made us and knows us inside out, and so knows perfectly well that we need more than just a book, even one as splendid as the Bible, and more than his spiritual guidance—we so easily hear ourselves when we think it’s Jesus—to keep us on the straight and narrow path.
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We couldn’t run our country by giving everyone a copy of the Constitution and urging each person to interpret it to the best of his or her ability; chaos would ensue. And Jesus knew he couldn’t entrust the future of his people to a book alone or to a private relationship to an invisible God. So he founded a visible Church, whose task it would be to carry on his work of truth-teaching and life-giving. The truth his Church would teach was the truth about God’s love for us and his desire that we should love as he does. The life his Church would give was a share in the trinitarian life of God, who is love. It’s worth repeating: All the Church teaches, doctrinally and morally, all her Masses and prayers and sacraments have one ultimate purpose, to deepen our love of God and one another. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and God is love. We are to be love.
Jesus came into the world to teach us how to do that, to unite himself to us so that we could do that. He founded his Church, the Catholic Church, to carry on his work. In the school of love, the Church is our teacher and mother, communicating Jesus’ truth and life. All other things being equal, there is no better place to be than in the Catholic Church if one desires to know God, to be fully human, and to master the art of love. Others may graduate, but if we wish to be A students, we will need all the help the Church can give us. We only hurt ourselves when we reject or ignore the truth and life she has to offer
Monsignor Charles Fink is the Director of Spiritual Formation at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huintington, New York
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