To the Christian Family Groups

Brothers and sisters – I ask the Holy Spirit to give depth and wisdom and relevance to what I say to you. Because without that inspiration my words will be useless.

When I consider the troubles of our time, it is the sicknesses of the Church page 451 that trouble me most. Because the Christian community has the task of renewing the world. But if the doctor is sick, how can he inspire confidence in the patient, or help him in a real way? Or if the servant is paralysed, how can he serve up a meal or welcome guests or set the house in order? The Church is meant to represent Christ as doctor and servant of the whole world. Yet a sick doctor or a paralysed servant is no use at all.

I feel this keenly in my own nature. The sick come to me. Often I cannot heal them. The sad come to me. Often I cannot console them. The power and joy of the Spirit are absent, or if they come, it is only now and then, like sunshine in winter.

This may well be because of my sins. But when I look to our mother the Church, what I see does not fill me with a holy confidence. Truly, she is still herself. But she does not shine. She does not plainly embody the grace and truth and hope and love and hospitality of Christ. She seems to travel, as it were, in disguise, under a coat of ritualism and fetishism and moralism and materialism, as if she were what she is not, some kind of neo-Judaic cult.

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