606. November 18, Dedication of Basilicas of St Peter & St Paul

Meditations no. 533 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Church is a mystery that we need to contemplate with eyes of faith.

Today we commemorate the anniversary of the liturgical dedication of the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul in Rome. Trusting in the intercession of these two apostles, we ask God to always watch over the holy Spouse of his Son: From St Peter and St Paul the Church first received the faith of Christ. May they help your Church to grow in your grace until the end of time. This feast is thus a good occasion for us to deepen in our knowledge of the Church and grow in our love for her.

We need to meditate frequently on the fact that the Church is a deep and great mystery, so that we never forget it. We cannot fully understand the Church on this earth. If men, using only their reason, were to analyse it, they would see only a group of people who abide by certain precepts and think in a similar way. But that would not be the Church .

The Church, the Second Vatican Council teaches, is in the nature of sacrament-a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men. It is a mystery, not only in the sense of the hidden depth of her life, but also in the sense that the Church is not so much a human and historical and visible reality, as a divine reality, far superior to our normal capacity to know. Like all truths supernaturally revealed by God, we cannot grasp the reality of the Church with the light of reason alone. We have to look on her with eyes of faith. In the Church we Catholics find our faith, our norms of conduct, our prayer, our sense of fraternity. Through it we are united with all our brothers who have already left this life and are being cleansed in purgatory-the Church suffering-and with those who already enjoy the beatific vision and love forever the thrice holy God-the Church triumphant. The Church is in our midst and at the same time transcends history. It was born under the mantle of our Lady and continues to praise her on earth and in heaven as its mother.

Love for our Mother the Church helps us to understand her better.

The Church is a mystery. In the first place, therefore, we have to ask God to increase our faith: adauge nobis fidem! Without faith, it is impossible to grasp more fully the mystery of Christ and his Mystical Body.

And along with faith, we need love. Paul VI said: If there is any study in which love contributes to the conquest of truth, it is precisely the study of the Church. In order to understand the Church, one first has to love her. And only then, to study her.

There are many motives that impel us to love the Church. She is spotless and without wrinkle, and has been enriched by God with heavenly goods. She is the Mystical Body of Christ, and also his immaculate Spouse. She is our Mother. We owe her everything. She has engendered us to a new life, to the life of grace, which will bring us eternal happiness. She has given us the faith, and by her Magisterium, keeps our faith integral and fruitful; she is the dispenser of the sacraments; she has given us charity; she unites us; she educates us in love, in genuine humanism and in understanding; she guides us, defends us, and leads us along paths of hope; she gives us a foretaste of our future life and of the happiness that awaits us.

Faced with so many goods that we receive from the Church, our attitude has to be one of filial thanksgiving, along with the eagerness to love our holy Mother more, for she has given us the life of grace and nourishes us day by day with inexhaustible care. We should feel a holy pride in belonging to the Church. Our Father wrote: You became very thoughtful when you heard me say: I want the blood of my Mother the Church to run in my veins; not Alexander’s, or Charlemagne’s, nor that of the seven sages of Greece.

We have to show our love for the Church in word and deed.

We need to shout out loudly today-time and again-those bold words of St Peter to a group of important people in Jerusalem: This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has become the head of the corner. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4: 11-12).

Thus spoke the first Pope, the rock on which Christ built his Church. He was moved to do so by his filial devotion to our Lord and by his solicitude for the little flock entrusted to him. From him and from the rest of the Apostles, the first Christians learned to love the Church tenderly.

The Church always stands in need of our love, shown by our words and deeds. But there are moments when this is more necessary than ever. We cannot be naive or indifferent: If we love the Church, there will never arise in us a morbid interest in airing, as the faults of the Mother, the weaknesses of some of her children. The Church, the Spouse of Christ, does not have to intone any mea culpa. But we do: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The only true mea culpa is a personal one, not the one which attacks the Church, pointing out and exaggerating the human defects which, in this holy mother, result from the presence in her of men… .

The mystery of the holiness of the Church-that pristine light which can become obscured by the shadows of human baseness-rejects even the slightest thought of suspicion, of doubt about the beauty of our mother. Nor can we tolerate, without protesting, that others should insult her. We cannot seek out in the Church vulnerable points in order to criticize them, as some do who show thereby neither their faith nor their love. I cannot conceive of anyone having true affection for his mother who speaks of her with disdain.

We have meditated in our prayer on the mystery of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. It is time to ask ourselves: Do I share with Christ his zeal for souls? Do I pray for the Church of which I form part, in which I must carry out a specific mission which no one else can do for me? To be in the Church is already much, but it is not enough. We must “be” the Church, because our Mother must never be a stranger to us, something external, foreign to our deepest thoughts.

Let us entrust our zealous concern to the intercession of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, pillars of the Church. And we ask the most Blessed Virgin, Mater Ecclesiae, to obtain from her Son Jesus the grace of being, at every moment, good and faithful children of our holy Mother the Church.