Thursday, October 19 : Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl

If we are, in fact, participants in the internal life of the Church, the authenticity and the intensity of this participation is not only a matter of knowledge. One can be an excellent theologian and live only very weakly from the life of God; We can very well know what the Church is and to be only an anemied cell. Likewise, we can “live faith” for all that is God and not to live it, but only to adhere to it intellectually for what is Church to us. Even when we live in a life united to Jesus, we must, I believe, ask if we do not make him and his love in some ways a little “historical”, if we do not see Him more as He was, and not as he is, in the Church. Have we understood as Joan of Arc, that “Christ and the Church is all one”? We sometimes have, vis-à-vis the Church, the attitude of someone who wants a certificate of good conduct. The church does not lead: she is, and we are in her. She is the body of Christ and we are in her. She is the body of Christ and we are members of this body. Our dependence, our dedication to her, if they require external acts or signs, are above all a dependence meaning an internal, vital dedication. Our dependence, vis-à-vis this body that she is, is considerable.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team