Episode 08: The Church
The People in the Pews
An opening mediation
“Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.”
““MY DEAR WORMWOOD*
I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of “Christians” in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real - though of course an unconscious - difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.
Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His “free” lovers and servants - “sons” is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to “do it on their own”. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do - if the “patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner - then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question “If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?” You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy’s ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these “smug”, commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind for as long as you can.
Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape”
(Here we return to Screwtape to see that just as he warns against argument (reason) as tool of the Enemy's he also has plenty to say about the Church. This is where Screwtape really does get it right. We should look at the Church as he does: "the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners". But we do as he goes on to tell Wormwood let our own expectations of who these people should be get in the way of our view of the Church. For example, we can let ourselves be distracted by what the reader is wearing rather than what the reader is saying. It can take a long time to cure ourselves of these bad habits, but Screwtape is here again right. Real humility is the answer. Everyone in the Church is on a journey toward holiness. If we look inside, we shall see that we are woefully unprepared ourselves and yet mercy was still provided.
Here converts are already familiar with the fish out of water feeling that you go to mass and you haven't done anything right, and thus spend the whole time worrying about what to do next. But as you grow more comfortable with the mass and finally have time to enjoy such a wonderful time of communal prayer, do not succumb to the temptation of replacing your worry with new distractions!
Weekly
Prayer
Intentions
To be prayed daily
Pause for some silence
Pause for some silence
The Sign of the Cross
Start by touching your right hand to your forehead, then your stomach, followed by your left and right shoulders while saying "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen"
You give us others
Lord, you give us others, who watch, when we sleep, who believe, when we doubt, and keep praying, when we are reduced to silence.
You give us others, who walk with us, who hope and fear with us, who are tired and do not fail us, to whom we can turn with our cares and our needs. You give us others, who stand with us before you, who ask you, and question, who thank you, and are always ready to serve you. You give us others, and entrust them to us. We do not love you without them, nor are we loved by you without them. Let us be a blessing to one another on our way to you. Amen.
Specific intentions:
Lord, strengthen your Church, purify it of wrongdoing, fill it with love.
For the leaders of the Church, may they continue to shepherd the faithful along the path to salvation.
Lord, help me to appreciate my faith community as a precious gift from you.
Personal intentions:
Please add your own intentions here.
Our Father:
Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Glory Be:
Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end, Amen.
Weekly
Journal
Prompt
Weekly Readings
We are the body of Christ as members of the Church. Thus, we have a responsibility to one another to nourish and be nourished in our faith from that community. How do the Church's four marks (One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic) strengthen the Catholic identity, both as a community and as you an individual? How can we strive for unity among all Christians to heal the mistrust and misunderstanding between us? Why is this our responsibility?
Click on the Link to download each of the articles for further reading this week.
The Church as Mystery
How can the Church be both Human and Divine? Click here to download
The Church as Salvation
Why is salvation a group sport? Click here to download
The Four Marks of the Church
Why is the Church one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic? Click here to download
Weekly Activity:
The Mass
As we go through the sacraments, we will come to see all of the beautiful theology behind the celebration of the mass. For this week, however, we just want to focus on it as the best example of communal prayer that the Church provides. This week, take the time to go to Mass and pay close attention to the interaction of the community during the celebration of the Mass.
Enjoy how the congregation comes together in praise with the opening hymn.
Say Hello your neighbor as you enter the pew. Notice the similar greeting you get from the priest celebrating mass at the beginning to which the congregation responds "And with your Spirit".
Listen as the congregation comes together to say the penitential act to communally ask for the forgiveness of sin and request "therefore I ask blessed Mary ever Virgin , all the Angles and Saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God."
Once again the congregation enters into the dialogue with the responses to the readings and the Psalms.
Listen as the whole church sings Alleluia,
Then once again as the congregation voices their petitions with "Lord hear OUR prayer"
With the Eucharistic prayers and the congregation responds to the prayers of consecration the priest is praying.
Especially as we all prayer together the Our Father, as Jesus taught his disciples to pray.
Pass the peace to those around you, sharing the love and peace of Christ.
Join in with the congregation as they come together once again to sing praise to God after the final blessing.