Weekday

A reading by
FR HUGO RAHNER 2
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The Catholic Church is a house full of glory extending far and wide into every land of this our terrestrial world. We sing her praises because we love her. For she is the hidden queen of human history…
All this would be, however, only “boasting according to the flesh” and not “glory in the cross of Christ” – all would be counterfeit, falsified, and therefore filled with that furtive disappointment that we so often experience after ecclesiastical ceremonies, if we did not also speak of the incomprehensible mystery of Christian existence which Paul describes with the words: “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that concern my weakness.” The Apostle is speaking here of his own wretchedness. However, one of the principle truths of the revelation of the New Testament, as sketched by Paul, is that the strength of God reveals itself in human weakness.
The salvific work of the Father, which was contained in love before the very foundation of the universe, reveals itself to us in the Word which became flesh, and will be completed through the instrument of the Church in the power of grace victorious up to its blessed conclusion in weakness. For as Scripture tells us: “The power of God reaches its perfection in weakness”. Let us leave these words as they stand. Indeed let us keep the expression in the shocking bluntness of the Greek words: “The dynamis of God reaches perfection in asthenia.”

The force of these words can be vaguely perceived from what technology has to say today about dynamics, and from what medicine has to say about asthenia. So, let us read: the power of God reaches its goal in asthenia, in stunted asthenic growth, in frailty, therefore in all that is in contrast to what is big, strong, healthy, well formed, humane, rational.
So, and only so, does the explosive power of the Father’s salvific love reveal itself, passionately driving onward to victory in the mystical Christ. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men…and the base things of the world and the despised has God chosen…lest any flesh should pride itself before him. So that, just as it is written: ‘Let him who takes pride, take pride in the Lord'”.

2
“The Church, God’s Strength in Human Weakness,” in The Church, Readings in Theology, LaPierre et. al., eds. P.J. Kenedy & Sons, New York 1963. pp3-4.