Many Catholics are asking questions they’ve not asked before, questions they don’t like asking: How can we survive without the Eucharist?  Why isn’t someone doing more to walk with the laity, to listen to their fears?  What about the scandals we’re finding on the front pages of our newspapers?

It is all well and good to talk about discipleship, but unless our leaders speak frankly about the Church within which we practice that discipleship, we’re going to be like astronauts, spinning around in space, untethered from the real world.

Our people need a friend, someone who understands their distress, spoken or otherwise.  Someone who will help them to forgive those they feel have betrayed them, lest their anger turn to bitterness and bitterness to despair.

For, without forgiveness, we cannot pray, and without prayer, we are scarcely alive, simply marking time until our lives are over, too confused with today to consider tomorrow.  Certainly, God has something better in mind for us.

Friends we have, reaching out, saying our pain is also theirs, reminding us with Paul that nothing can separate us from Christ or from one another.

Such a friend is Carlo Carretto, who, before his death, left us much encouragement in his writings.Gently, in page after page, he leads us into the desert to ponder, to pray, and to listen -- to learn wisdom and compassion.

He spoke of his past, how, as a young adult he was nurtured by his family, and of the experience of community in a Catholic Action group.  “And, since I was untrained, the community was always careful to instil in me the humility of study, and daily meditation on the Scriptures.”

“The humility of study.”  Doesn’t that phrase remind you of the base communities in Latin America, where study and prayer form a solid defense against a bare-bones kind of fundamentalism?

At times, Carretto also found an immense need to put aside study.  “Weary of reasoning, I tried to love... I sought, for he was seeking me... I found him because he was already there, waiting for me.”

This same love of God is reflected in his deep respect and love for women.  He describes how angry he was, when, as a young cadet in Milan at the Alpine Military Academy, he heard much loose talk, and was even tricked into going to a house of prostitution with other cadets.

Although he chose the celibate life, as a member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, founded by Charles de Foucauld, Carretto, he did not refuse to associate with women, and followed a simple motto in his relationships with them: “Women, all women, are my sisters.”

While he valued celibacy, he said that it should not be a requisite for the priesthood.  Furthermore, he suggested that the priests of the future will be primarily those who are married, who will volunteer their services in the community, while holding down regular jobs.

After being engaged in non-stop ministry, primarily with Catholic Action groups, Carretto was drawn to spend many years in the Sahara Desert, praying and leading a life of simplicity among the Bedouin.  He then returned to Italy, where he wrote his spiritual testimony, I Sought and I Found, describing his journey toward, and struggles with God.

In his book, Forgotten Among the Lilies – Learning To Love Beyond Our Fears, the popular and wise Ronald Rolheiser, paraphrases the opening lines of Carretto’s love letter addressed to the Church, the visible institutional Church.

How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you!
You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more that I owe anyone.
I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.
You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.
Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.
Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms! 
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go?
To build another church?
But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. 
And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church.
No, I am old enough. I know better!

How many Catholics, burdened with the scandals of the Church today, find themselves echoing Carretto’s Love Letter to the Church?

Let us pray for one another as we move closer to the sacred days of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, for we are not alone on our journey.  Christ is with us, we with him.  Blessings on you and all dear to you.

Amen.

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