The Purpose of the Church

St. Joseph's, Spencer, MA

Have you ever noticed how everyone kind of fits God into their own personality?    "Tight  ass" people have a "tight ass" God, and "laid back" people have a "laid back" God.  MMMmmmmm.   God is God.  But we each experience God differently.  God is constant Himself; it's us.  I guess it's because we all have different personalities, so we each experience God differently.

Think back as a child, and I suppose as an adult, who first becomes aware of God.  The God we envisioned was One we could love.  How we see God changes through the years as we change and come to know the one true God more and more as God is, and not as each one experiences God--at least we're aware of the possibility that our religious experience has grown.  

Ultimately, God can never be fully understood.  What we think and say about God tells us more about ourselves, than God.  (Yikes!  I'm a kaleidoscope!)  

Wait a minute.  Wait just one minute!

Don't we know of God's existence and presence only by what God has chosen to reveal to us?

So it's up to God.   ?????

I think I need a spiritual director.

This is where I see the purpose of the Church.  The Church is our only assurance of a universal idea of God.  And even if the Church only ensures an orthodoxy of concepts, it's at least something other than my own crazy ideas.  The Church reveals our God.  But the living God who is experienced is in a sense still my God.