My family and I sat down to say the rosary together last night. We have done it many times before, but last night I was particularly struck by the words of the Salve Regina. "Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy . . . sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears . . . after this our exile". There have been times when I have said the rosary in a joyful mood and found those words somewhat anticlimactic. "Sighs", "mourning", "weeping", and "valley of tears" do not seem to have much weight when you are not actually feeling like you are in "exile", do they?
I have been saying for years now that I could "sense" a trial for the Church on the horizon. It was something like when you can smell a coming rainstorm in the wind. It is not as though I was wanting this -- God forbid it. But the tension in society and the compromise in the Church over the last few decades could not continue without something snapping. Sadly, I have to say that it appears that we have only just begun to see the ugly stuff that is coming. I guess now those words in the Salve Regina can mean something to us, since we have more and more things to mourn and weep about.
I ache down deep inside, and the drudging up of these things by the media just serves to create greater and greater unrest in our already scarred society. Division is being encouraged and now acts of violence against (innocent) Catholic clergy are starting to show up more and more. It has been said often that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. In line with that thought, I would say that the Church cannot truly be strong until we are hated. To a certain degree it does not matter whether we are hated for what we have done, or for what someone else in the Church has done. The problem that exists is that the things the world is hating us for right now are also things that we as Catholics hate. This makes it hard to speak against their anger (even if they ignore the far more common sexual abuse that exists in the public schools!).
So here we are, mourning for the sins that have occurred and been protected and/or ignored by some of our own Bishops. Yet, while we are angry at these sins, and heartbroken for those who have suffered at their hands, let us make sure that we have not gone off the rails ourselves. What is the purpose of seeing the sins of others, after all? It is not merely to get us upset, or to drive us to wring our hands in hopelessness, while whining, "how could this happen?" That does not help anything. As my own Bishop, Steven Lopes, said recently, fixing the policies does not actually change things; cleansed hearts change things.
Therefore, since we cannot force others to change just by being upset at them, what do we ourselves do? We force ourselves to change! If we want to see Bishops do a better job, then let us do a better job. Let us make sure that at times like this we are not just mourning about the sins of others, but using this time to mourn for our own sins. What have you done to fix the sins that are occurring in your life right now? Have you "doubled your efforts" to avoid covering up your own sins? It is not a great idea to condemn someone else's "cover up" if you yourself are "covering up" something in your own life. It is hypocritical to complain that someone ignores his own sins when you are ignoring yours. Think long and hard about this truth!
Those words from the Salve Regina mean so much more to me today than they did formerly. I have genuinely offered up a great number of "sighs". Things do feel like a "valley of tears" right now. I have cried to our Holy Queen asking for her prayers for me to find greater holiness and to turn from my own sins. No, I am not depressed (I rarely get so), but it does feel like a spiritual punch in the gut. God struck Korah and his followers dead when they complained at Moses, and He did it in front of all Israel so that they would not fall into the same sin. Let us take our experiences and learn from them. Let us take full advantage of this trying time, and find the holiness that God calls us to.
I beg for God's hand of healing on those who have been hurt by their own priests and bishops, and I pray earnestly for penitence in those who have fallen into these grave sexual sins. I also thought about a passage in Ezekiel that speaks about something similar. In fact, it is the first reading for tomorrow. It is where God condemns the "evil shepherds" who "fed themselves and not the sheep". Let none of us be subject to the same condemnation because we failed to show concern for our sins, or for the well being of others.
