By Bertha Melendres
Because I am Catholic!
When I ask myself why I have not left or walked away from the Catholic Church, like so many people who choose to seek their happiness or comfort outside the Church and far from the faith for a million reasons. I think of the precious treasure that they leave to venture through life, looking for something that fulfills them and makes them happy. I think they leave everything for almost nothing. Because in the Church we have what you will not be able to find anywhere else. To begin with, I know and I am sure that God himself, the creator of the whole universe and all of the galaxies, the creator of the great mountains, the immense seas, the one who made all kinds of animals, trees and plants, the creator of even the smallest cell in my fingerprint, or in the pupil of my eyes. That omnipotent creator who loves me more than the angels, that creator who gives himself for me totally, is truly present in that little piece of bread and wine that is offered to us every Sunday and during Mass every day in the Holy Eucharist.
I think of the perfect love of Jesus who, through his sacrifice gives us the Church, which is each one of us, his mystical body that continues to carry out his saving work today. Here in our piece of the world, in our society, this Church is where we can receive from himself in the Sacrament of the altar, where we can be baptized, accepted and embraced as his children, because we are no longer orphans but His children. This Church where we can be forgiven in the sacrament of reconciliation. This Church that offers us the sacraments of Confirmation, the Anointing of the Sick, marriage and Holy Orders. Without which there would be no Church.
I think of how the Holy Spirit has vivified and sanctified the Church since it was founded in that room where his friends and disciples were, fearful for their own lives on the day of Pentecost. And as for almost 2,000 years, the Holy Spirit has kept the Church alive despite our wickedness and lack of love, despite the mediocrity of some of its leaders, who perhaps have not known how to guide the flock and who have made very serious mistakes. But the Church has survived through the centuries because it is not the Church of Peter or Paul or any pope. It is the Church of Christ, the Church of the Holy Spirit, the Church of God the Father, the Church of the true Triune God.
I think of the beautiful souls we call saints, beginning with the Virgin Mary, our mother in heaven and the mother of Jesus himself. In our brothers and sisters who gave their lives so that you and I might know Christ and have a Church. Therefore, if I were to distance myself from the Church and from God, I know that I would be empty inside. As St. Augustine says, because we all have a hole in our soul that only God can fill, we have an intense desire for the spiritual, for God himself. Because we belong to him and because we are spiritual beings created in his image and likeness. How could I then be outside or disconnected from the one who gives me life, from the one who sustains it every day, the one who gives me my identity and to whom I will return one day. To be Catholic is to venture into the mystery of the faith, which has been given to us freely and without meriting it. As Catholics, we were called to discover and love the one who is at the center of everything, Jesus Christ himself, true God and true man, for whom we live, as our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us.
Bertha Melendres serves as Diocesan Director of Hispanic Ministry.