Here is today’s church, the visible and tangible church.

It’s composed of wounded people, taken by anguish, who need healing treatments, liberation treatments. In the real church there are judgments, disagreements among so many other things. There are people like the Dead Sea, who only receive things and never give it back. Those people who forget the benefits received just keep remembering what wasn’t done.

This is the real church. This is the church that is being lapidated, restored, sanctified and renovated day by day by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is the church we should love, spend our time and talents, our lives and all we have in it. This is the church that God has been putting before us so we may be used for His honor and glory.

At the time we acquire the vision of the real church, we’ll be able to work with it, love and respect despite its defects. We should learn that nobody is perfect, homes are imperfect, leaders are imperfect, what does exist are people seeking perfection.

I hope these words teach us to love our church more, tolerating the weak and working with much more love and less judgment.

There is the church of our dreams, but also the real church that need us, that need our prayers, our love and tolerance and it’s in this church that Jesus wants to act, using our lives.

Pr. Ednaldo B. Ribeiro.