Thinking Anew: Whenever I pass an open church, I always want to go inside
'I let my eyes adjust to the dim light, light a candle, find a corner that gives me a glimpse of something that will lift my head.' Photograph: iStockWhen church buildings were closed during Covid lockdowns, it was often pointed out that the church was not the building, but the people. This is an important truth but it is not the whole truth. Place can and does play an important part in our worship because we are embodied creatures.
Whenever I pass an open church, I always want to go inside. I let my eyes adjust to the dim light, light a candle, find a corner that gives me a glimpse of something that will lift my head. I think that there is a very different feel to churches in which reserved sacrament is reverently housed, with the accompanying red light burning night and day. In these places the air itself feels full of God’s presence and it seems easier to pray.
If the church is our mother, she is sometimes an abusive mother, and how does a child recover from that? In the West these days there is a mass exodus from the church, and those of us in the church must take responsibility. Many cannot bear the trauma or abuse of power they have experienced or witnessed others experiencing at the hands of the church. If the church is our mother, she is sometimes an abusive mother, and how does a child recover from that? Yet despite all this, there always remain parts of Christ’s beloved church bearing faithful witness to the love of God for all that he has made.
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