Christ instituted the Church as an institution that is at once human and divine, and it serves as God's preferred mode of bringing wounded humans into contact within himself. Despite the sins and weaknesses found among its members, it serves as the dwelling of the Holy Spirit and a continuation of the Incarnation among us.
The Church is unique among human institutions and organizations: it is not only a human thing, but like Christ himself is both human and divine, a continuation of the Incarnation.
Can the Church really be Christ's body, inhabited by the Holy Spirit, when there is so much sin and weakness among its members?
The Church is the hospital that dispenses the medicines and teaches the protocols that can heal and change wounded, fallen humans, preparing us for the presence of the Holy God.
Before the fullness of time when Jesus will establish his Kingdom in the sight of all, he has established a time of mercy, working through his Church to proclaim the Gospel to all nations.
For over three thousand years, God's people have understood proper liturgical practice to be an essential aspect of what it means that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Unless the temporal activity of social life goes forward within a framework of leisure and liturgy, it becomes misshapen. Liturgy conforms the whole of life to the harmonies of heaven.
God’s insistence on a particular mode of worship was not arbitrary: he was imparting the order and rhythm of heaven to the earth such that he could dwell among his people in their praises.
For many of us, the Mass can be more a chore than a source of strength and delight. That can leave us troubled and wondering what is wrong: Maybe God is boring? Maybe I am boring?
During the last many decades, Catholic life has been dominated by the question of tradition: what it is, whether and how it is important, and how it should take its place in the life of faith.