There is a beautiful song about the Eucharis that invites us to:
“Look beyond the bread you eat -see you Saviour and your God. Look beyond the
Cup you drink – see His blood poured out as love.”
We are invited constantly to look beyond in
our Christian living and see the deeper reality present. St Francis used to speak of
the “eyes of the Spirit”.
Before the crib – look beyond the
helpless infant – see your God.
Before the Cross – look beyond the
horror – see your salvation.
Before the altar – look beyond the
obvious – see your Risen Lord.
This is how God works – He calls
forth faith, a sight that is deeper than the merely visible, that does not
depend only on outward appearances.
We need the same faith vision, the same
eyes of the Spirit, the same light of God when it comes to the Church. We need
to look beyond the institution heavy with history, the Church whose failures
are trumpeted by the world, the sins of whose members are only too obvious at
times.
There is an old Latin saying about
the Church - Ecclesia semper reformanda
- the Church is always being reformed, always in need of reform. And the
powerful image of Jesus cleansing the Temple
has been used again and again throughout the centuries by popes and prophets,
saints and reformers working for that renewal.
But even as we pray and work for
that deeper renewal we must not hesitate to view the Church in the light of
faith. In the Creed each Sunday we profess our faith in the Church; we profess
that it is not merely a human institution but the work of God.
The community of faith, made up of
us ordinary human beings, is being built into the temple of the Holy Spirit. Each gathering of the Lord’s
disciples especially for the Eucharist, weak and broken as we are, is truly that sacred space from which living water
flows to heal and refresh.
