THIS Is the Church: An AHA Moment from Indianapolis

Roxane Salonen shares the captivating thought that restored her hope during the National Eucharistic Congress last month in Indianapolis.

“The Church is dying,” we’re told, and the exodus by our loved ones from the Faith seems to affirm it. We run to Our Lady of Sorrows, empty-handed, wondering whether it could ever turn around.  

I, too, have watched headlines about the Church with dismay; felt utterly powerless over how to address the shameful sin within the Body of Christ while still trying to make a case for Her Bride; and fallen into despair over what seems the inevitable collapse of Christendom.  

But while attending the National Eucharistic Congress last month in Indianapolis, something else began to take hold, moment by moment, in grace-filled, mounting fashion.  

A light in the darkness

The first speck of light happened the opening night, when my friend Joanne and I emerged from an Adoration hour at St. John’s Church in the heart of the city. We’d stumbled upon this little oasis by accident on the way to find food. It was 9:30 p.m., and we hadn’t had dinner yet after experiencing a bus breakdown. We were famished.  

But before finding a restaurant, we noticed a sign, “This is Jesus,” diverting us into the church. There, in a darkened sanctuary — the only light shining upon the altar where Jesus was exposed in the monstrance — we laid our travel-weary souls at His feet, allowing ourselves to be refreshed by His presence and the music emanating from live voices and instruments from the loft above and behind.  

When it was time to head back into the streets, we were arrested by a moment in time, as two religious sisters bent down to talk to a young woman sitting on the ground, holding a worn sign: “PTSD: Seeking Human Kindness.”  

She couldn’t have known that on this evening, the streets where she likely had sat many times before would be strewn with Catholics, bursting with excitement, and looking for ways to share the hope living within them. And yet, there were these two beautiful consecrated women witnessing to this young soul of the sort of human kindness she may only have suspected might be possible before then.  

That visual would stay with me for the duration, like a little light burning near my heart. I would see other images like this that would ignite that flame anew and keep me running, running toward Jesus.  

THIS is the Church

So many graces unfolded in a tight space of five days that it’s been hard to process and hold them all, but in one particular instance, a reality contradicting the headlines hit me, and it was as if the condemnations of the world toward the Church melted in dramatic fashion, like the Wicked Witch of the West being doused with water by Dorothy in Oz.  

It was during the final Mass, as I sat in the nosebleed section of the enormous Lucas Oil Stadium, that the realization came. As lines of priests in white garb ascended like a heavenly procession to the heights to bring Christ to the masses, I heard these words pounding in my heart: “THIS is the Church.” 

This is the Church. Not the headlines, though they reveal a broken-down part of Her needing repair. Not the clergy, who have fallen prey to human weakness. Not even the sins we lay people commit day in and day out.    

No, THIS is the Church: this massive community of broken individuals seeking healing, and finding it; seeking nourishment, and being given our fill; seeking life that we might bring it back to those who have yet to receive Jesus’ restorative presence.  

The Church is grace poured into a stadium of 60,000 people for five blessed days in mid-summer. It is those same souls bleeding out into the city within a several-mile radius to bring Jesus into the light of day. It is throngs of the baptized lit up by the love of God, running toward the Bread of Life, and turning right around to bring Him to others.  

The Evil One is the greatest deceiver. Through daunting headlines, dismay over loved ones losing sight of the Light of the World, and devastating news stories, he has throttled us into believing the Church is dying and doomed. But in Indianapolis, Toto came out of nowhere to yank away the curtain, and behind it, Old Scratch was caught maneuvering the gears, trying to fake us all out, to believe that our lives in Christ are a dying endeavor.  

Freshly emerged from that illumination, I hereby announce that the Church is not dead, but alive, on fire, and filled with hope! The Church is God working in us. The Church is Jesus the Christ. The Church is our strength and our salvation.  

Repent and believe, for the Kingdom of God is at hand, and as vibrant as ever!

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Copyright 2024 Roxane Salonen
Images: Copyright 2024 Roxane Salonen, all rights reserved.