Once you have wept with the Church ...

Friday's "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat was an extract from Fr Raniero Cantalamessa's book Loving the Church: Scriptural Meditations for the Papal Household. I would expect that this book is the published text of meditations preached to the Papal Household. Though published in 2005, Fr Cantalamessa's words have a resonance in 2010 that could perhaps not have been foreseen.

Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her so that she would be "without stain". And the Church would be without stain if we were not a part of it! The Church would have one less wrinkle if I committed one less sin...

We should ask Christ to forgive all of our inconsiderate judgments and the many offenses we heap upon his Bride, and as a result on him as well. Try to tell a man who is truly in love that his bride is ugly or a "good-for-nothing", and see if you can take his ire ...

Once you have ... wept with the Church, once you have humbled yourself at its feet, God can command you as he has done in the past to raise your voice against "the wounds of the Church". But not before. The saints have applied to the Church that which Job said about God, according to the Vulgate version of the Bible then in use: "Even if God were to kill me, I would still have recourse to him" (see Jb 13:15).