St. Augustine wrote: "The Church is a whore, but she is my mother."
Chew on that one for awhile.
Here's my take. The church falls way short of what it is called to be. Always. We can pretty much take a cold hard look at our selves in the mirror at any given moment and see some pretty rotten stuff.
But to quote a peaceable zealot: "the Church is an outpost of God's Kingdom, a continuation of the incarnation. If you don't love the Church, then you don't love the very body of the crucified and risen Lord."
So do you think Augustine is hinting at a love/hate relationship?
And what do you do with the whore? How do you treat her? What do you ask of her?
And if the church is a whore, does that make me a pimp?
No, it's your sweet ride that makes you a pimp...
ReplyDeleteI really like that quote. If we lie about the often sad state of the church to ourselves or the world, we become irrelevant, but we also can't lose our hope or love for it.