Dear Parishioners,

I recently read some stories from a book titled Surprised By Truth. The book is about people who have found the truth of the Catholic faith and decided to convert. It contains stories from some pretty famous Catholic apologists like Tim Staples, Steve Wood and Jimmy Akin. It is a pretty good book if you want to hear about the journey of these people into the Church and pick up some reasons to believe along the way. While I was reading Dave Armstrong’s conversion story, he said something quite profound that I would like to share with you today.

Armstrong points out that as a Protestant, he was constantly trying to get to bring Christianity back to the earliest Church. From his point of view, the Church is like a ship that kept on acquiring barnacles. In this analogy the barnacles were the man-made traditions and false beliefs. He wanted the Church to be perfect as it was when Christ founded it. However, after he read the Church Fathers and John Henry Newman, he came to a stunning revelation: that the Church always had barnacles because the Church was formed from regular sinful humans. There was no point where there was a perfect Church and we have been dealing with each other’s faults since the beginning. It is like what our Lord says in the parable of the Weeds Among Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30), he patiently waits for the right time to make his harvest to give people the maximum time to repent. But in the meantime, there will be sinners in the Church.

I think this is a good lesson for us to be reminded of every so often when we get annoyed with people in the Church or even the bishops. We can be so convinced that we know better, or that other people are the problem. We might even be tempted to leave the Church sometimes because it seems so bad. However, this is absolutely the wrong attitude. We are all sinners and unless we are on guard against our sins, we could easily fall. So, may we have humility toward our own faults and depend on the mercy of God.

God bless!

Fr. Carter