15 October marks the memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila, also known as St Teresa of Jesus. This virgin and Doctor of the Church understood that holiness consists in nurturing an intimate friendship with Christ through an intense communion with his Church.

Her love for Jesus helped her to reform his Mystical Body, the Church, by means of her working, suffering and praying for Christ’s flock. Teresa’s earthly life finished while she was still founding new religious communities. Her last humble words show her wholehearted loyalty to Christ and his community of believers. “After all I die as a child of the Church”, and “O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another”. Teresa offered her entire life as a gift to God for the spiritual well-being of his entire Church. As Pope Benedict XVI rightly observed in his weekly catechesis on 2 February, in which he reflected on this great Spanish mystic, “St Teresa lives out unconditional love for the Church: She shows a lively ‘sensus Ecclesiae’, in the face of the episodes of division and conflict in the Church of her time. She reformed the Carmelite Order with the intention of serving and defending the ‘Holy Roman Catholic Church’, and was willing to give her life for the Church (cf. Vida, 33, 5).”

Notwithstanding such great exemplary characters in Church history there are Christians who, for various reasons, have nourished a certain diffidence of the institutional Church. They claim themselves as being close friends with Jesus but have moved away from his

Mystical Body. In his book The Apostles: The Origin of the Church and Their Co-Workers, the Holy Father describes such a behaviour as “inconceivable”. “The 12 Apostles are the most evident sign of Jesus’ will regarding the existence and mission of his Church, the guarantee that between Christ and the Church there is no opposition:

Despite the sins of the people who make up the Church, they are inseparable. Therefore, a slogan that was popular some years back, ‘Jesus yes, Church no,’ is totally inconceivable with the intention of Christ. This individualistically chosen Jesus is an imaginary Jesus.”

Following the ever increasing number of people who are leaving the Church, the time has come to ask some basic questions. For what reason am I in the Church? Can I equate my Church membership to that of a sports club, cultural association and so forth, in that if my

interests are not fulfilled, I can simply opt to leave?

Christ and his Church are one and the same thing. During his recent trip to his homeland, the Holy Father emphasised this essential point by referring to Saul’s persecution of Christ’s disciples. “On the road to Damascus, Christ himself asked Saul, the persecutor of the Church: ‘Why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4). With these words the Lord expresses the common destiny that arises from his Church’s inner communion of life with himself, the risen one. He continues to live in his Church in this world. He is present among us, and we with him.

“Why do you persecute me?” It is ultimately at Jesus that persecution of his Church is directed. At the same time, this means that when we are oppressed for the sake of our faith, we are not alone: Jesus Christ is beside us and with us.”

Is the populist slogan ‘Jesus yes, Church no’ rationally and spiritually tenable?

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap