Baffling Love

How baffling you are, oh Church,

and yet how I love you!

How you have made me suffer,

and yet how much I owe you!

I should like to see you destroyed,

and yet I need your presence.

You have given me so much scandal

and yet you have made me understand sanctity.

I have seen nothing in the world more

devoted to obscurity, more compromised,

more false, and I have touched nothing more pure,

more generous, more beautiful.

How often I have wanted to shut the doors

of my soul in your face, and how often

I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you, because

I am you,
although not completely.

And where should I go?

(Carlo Caretto, The God Who Comes)