Carlo Carretto

How baffling are you, O 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 died in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you,because I am you, though not completely.
And where would I go?

From "The God Who Comes" by Carlo Carretto