Et sustínui qui simul contristarétur, et non fuit: et qui consolarétur, et non invéni.—Ps 68:21

Many people ask me with our crisis in the Church, “What are we to do?”  At the risk of sounding saccharine-sweet, I’m going to propose that one of the best things you can do is to give your heart to Jesus to let His heart break in yours here on earth over the state of the Church.  If St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “Christ has no hands but yours; Christ has no feet but yours,” and since we know that Saul (before becoming Paul) in persecuting the Church was literally persecuting Christ-Himself (cf. Acts 9:4) then Christ will allow His heart to be broken in yours over the sadness in the Church.  But this is not just a sob-fest.  This is redemptive suffering.  If we truly seek holiness and if we truly desire the betterment of the Church (beginning with our own conversion) then we should consider giving a heart offered to God.

By “offered,” I mean first doing His will.  But at a distant second, something of the affections come in.  The Traditional Latin Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has as one of its propers the Psalm that reads the Latin at the top, or in the Douay-Rheims Bible, it reads, In thy sight are all they that afflict me; my heart hath expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none, and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.–Ps 68:21.  Notice that the Church has interpreted this in light of the Passion, considering she applies this to the Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  In other words, it is Jesus Himself saying from the cross to you, “And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.”

Of course, Christ did indeed find His Mother Mary as both Mother and Co-Redemptrix suffering with Him on the cross for the future life of the world.  But now, as the Church is being crucified by so many scandals (moral and doctrinal) we are called to remember that Mary is the Exemplar of the Church.  Mary is the Immaculate One towards Whom the Church journeys in her human element but has already arrived in her Divine element.  But if Mary is the Exemplar of the Church, and if the Church is currently being crucified like never before in history, then one has to wonder if it would not be impious to picture an inverse-Pietà where Mary (as Exemplar of Christ’ own Church being mocked) herself dies as Christ comforts her.

Either way, it is Jesus and Mary who weep over the state of the Church.  Our hearts offered become a location on earth for Christ to be pierced again. But this isn’t just to feel melancholic, self-righteous and full of self-pity for being on the right side of a Church crisis.  Rather, we offer our hearts to be pierced with Christ’s Own Heart, first so as to literally say “Here I am!” when He says from heaven, looking at the current state of the Church, “I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none, and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.”  Let you be the one he found to comfort Him as His Church was crucified in the hands of modernist infiltrators.  And from that piercing, we pray that rivers of living water come forth from us, for Christ Himself said of future believers, He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.—John 7:38