The abused and the abandoned need that living love. Right now. It’s too easy to tell them to find it in the Blessed Sacrament or in prayer. It’s too easy to blame, and shame them further, for being sad, or unhappy, or ashamed, by all the abuse they have experienced, all the harm they have endured. Jesus is Incarnate Wisdom, true enough, and truly and really present in the Blessed Sacrament. The abused and abandoned and gravely harmed need that living love. Words and high ideals have their place in the development and proper formation of souls, but they are not to be used as weapons to further harm and shame those who suffer in this sinful life and world.

There are so many souls in this world that have been gravely harmed, caught up in sins and the filth and the lies of this world. Those souls that have suffered the consequences of the sins of the world, can not be dismissed, can not be told simply to forgive. We must, in order for forgiveness to be actively healing, seek out and ask for that forgiveness, especially from those whom we have so ruthlessly and self-righteously mangled.

Don’t tell the abused to simply let it go. Acknowledge and share in their suffering. Ask their forgiveness. Seek their forgiveness. Be humble and confess all the grave harm we have done to them by failing to live truly loving lives and adhering truly and lovingly to the commandments of God. We have become a society of manipulators. Mangling our own souls and the souls of our victims, of whom Jesus Christ is the Head.

Yes, there is a crisis in the Church. It is a crisis concerning Truth. And our manipulation and mangling of Truth. And the Truth is always our victim, our outcast, our shamed and blamed scapegoat. And we crucify Him over and over again and again in his body, as we mangle and manipulate words and ideas.

Ave Maria. And on earth peace to men of good will.