BE the Church You Want To See in the World

Do you have a minute to talk?...

I knew I was entering sacred space when she asked me to close the door. “I’m divorced,” she said matter-of-factly, before my backside hit the chair. Her shiny blonde hair hung straight, each glossy strand in perfect place. “I was married for three years before I married Bob. We never had any children…”

But the real confession was yet to come...

“I am going through the annulment process and I am SO frustrated with the Church. ”She brushed her bangs aside, “I have never been frustrated with the Church before,” she said, surprised at herself. “I’ve been Catholic my whole life, I go to Mass every Sunday, I raise my children in the Church… I love her,” she said with genuine emotion. Her pale blue eyes searched mine for some acknowledgement, some recognition of the the truth in her words, “I tell everyone how much I love the Catholic Church….”

Beyond the pretty face, thick blonde hair and sparkly blue eyes I glimpsed, for the first time, the pain and suffering behind the ready smile. I sat across the table from her, bearing witness to her private agony. Between us was the unspoken truth; it is a rock hard place.

I hope my first words were “I’m sorry.” I am. The Church should be a place of healing and clearly this process was causing pain. “Lead with beauty,” Fr. Barron once said to me as though I was the only person in the large conference room filled to capacity. It has radically changed how I evangelize.

“The Church is a steward of the Truth,” I offered weakly. Old habits die hard. “She does not create it, her job is to carry it through time and space. Like a baton in a relay race, she is charged with protecting it and passing it down.”

God forgive me, I quit reading Matthew 19 in the classroom many years ago. My first year as a teacher, we read it together as a class. If statistics hold true, then more than half of the students in the room had experienced divorce. I had read their journals; I knew their pain. The harsh words of Jesus cut through the air, “I say to you,^* whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.” I held my breath that night, waiting for phone calls from angry parents.

It is not the first time the riven have spoken to me in their search for spiritual salve. What do I have to ease their pain if not the Word of God? What do you say to a child of God standing in front of you, writhing in pain from the wounds left by separating into two what God has made one flesh?

“You are loved.”

I didn’t say it but I wish I had. You are loved by God, by the Church--by me. It must be the first thing we say or nothing else will be heard. Without love the truth is a banging gong.

We (aka the Church) are here to testify to the truth of a love that does not end--no matter what. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. “Marriage is sign of God’s love for us,” I said, finally approaching beauty, “that’s why divorce was never part of God’s original plan for us.” It cannot end. God will never stop loving us and marriage is meant to testify to that in a fallen world.

The truth is that Church does not marry people, she bears witness to the spiritual union that is the work of God. We have no authority to separate what He has joined. The annulment process is necessary in order for people to remarry and stay true to the Word of God. It should be a process of healing, a place of pausing to look at the past in an attempt to understand what happened so that we grow and learn from it, so we don’t repeat it in the future.

I know several people who have begun the annulment process, I don’t know anyone who has completed it. It is the most painful of work. Old wounds are reopened; broken hearts are revisited. It is tempting to want to keep moving forward, to avoid at all cost “going backward.” There are times when it is necessary though, situations when going forward means going further away from our goal.

I don’t know how my words were received; I do know that she has been heavy on my thoughts and in my prayers.

One day after our conversation, as I wandered aimlessly through Target in search of something tangible to help bring peace and order into my world, it caught my eye: a small slender glass vase sparkling from the bottom shelf. Beauty in a bottle. I put it in my cart and on a new day, in a new week, I will give it to her with a flower and a note.

Carefully I will craft the words in my heart. Words that convey my hope she will stay in the Catholic Church, my hope that she presses on through the hard parts, that she learns and grows through the experience, that it makes her and her marriage stronger.

It is my hope that someday she will use her experiences to guide others along the rocky path, helping the Church to smooth and straighten the way. It is my sincere prayer that she will BE the Church she wants to see in the world. With her help I know that the body of Christ can move through the world with more grace and beauty, a better bride, closer to her groom.

It’s true: the Word of God is uncompromising. But the beauty is that the Word became flesh that we might more easily embrace it. Through Jesus all are made one. It is the Church’s mission to bring both God’s rock hard truth and his all embracing love into the world,. It is a suffering love.