Monday, August 19 : Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl

The ruptures necessary for the church and to a Christian, the ruptures necessary with the world to save the world and the ruptures necessary for the church to function, must be discerned, but they are fundamental. I believe that it is important that we become aware of the ruptures which are necessary for discipleship and without which a Christian life is not even elementary Christian, of the ruptures which are requested from any Christian simply because he or she is a baptized. We cannot become the flesh and blood of the Church by baptism, to be the flesh and blood of his body, of the body of Christ, without there being between the world and us oppositions, which are ruptures. It is through these ruptures that we become able to participate in the redemption of Christ. “At the same time,” said Paul VI, “that the Church becomes more fully aware of certain interior requirements, it is more strongly sollicited by the needs of the world for which it is intended. Likewise, it is because we are baptized, because we have received the Holy Spirit, because normally He must work in us, that He must train us in the walk of the Church. However, everything that moves, breaks with something. You could say that the elementary, essential freedom of the children of God, has rupture as a requirement. But a rupture is only Christian if it is motivated by union with Christ and participation in the work of Christ. We do not break to break. The whole body, the whole Church of Christ needs these fundamental ruptures. (…) These are ruptures that must make us free to belong only and definitively to Jesus Christ; ruptures that must give us the freedom to strive by grace to live fully charity according to the Gospel. These are ruptures that must give us the freedom to be available to His will at the heart of the Church.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team