Lift High the Cross

The Catholic Church was formed from Jesus' cross. This is a mystical union between God and mankind.

The beginning of the Church reflected back to the first creation when mankind was formed from clay--only Jesus' new creation was born out of His side where blood and water flowed.

Jesus' cross didn't produce death, but new life. Just as a woman's painful agony in childbirth results in a lifetime of joy in the love between her and her child, Jesus' death on the cross resulted in the love between Him and His Church.

Our bishops are not Jesus, and they, like Peter and the apostles, do not have perfect knowledge. They make mistakes. We know the apostles scattered when Jesus was arrested and put to death. The Church is not perfect, but Jesus is.

Sin is so rooted in us that we as a human race are disordered, and we do evil. This cannot be overcome without a savior. And our Savior choose to give life through the Church.

Peter was the rock Jesus used to build his Church because His Father revealed His nature to that man and not to another.

The cross may seem like an odd instrument of deliverance, but we do not decide how God should complete His work.

God gives us the gift of life and that is all we need to accept. We are not above our Master, and being creatures, we do not know the will of God until He reveals it to us. How does God reveal His Will? Through his Church.

Because the Church is made up of spiritually sick people, we will have scandals and sinful shepherds. When the first man and woman sinned, God did not destroy them, but rather gave them a blueprint of a way back to Him. It was the cross of Jesus.

A blueprint means we can (or not) built what the plans give to us. If we follow a blueprint we get what the designer could see, even if we could not.

Human architects give us what is good using natural laws of physics, but when we follow the Divine Architect we build a house without comparison in the Heavenly Kingdom.

This is why we stay in the Catholic Church, because just as we are both body and soul, our Church is both physical and spiritual.