Five Days Prostrate

 I was researching the writings of first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, and came upon this story:

Now Pilate, who was sent as procurator into Judea by Tiberius, sent by night those images of Caesar that are called ensigns into Jerusalem. This excited a very among great tumult among the Jews when it was day; for those that were near them were astonished at the sight of them, as indications that their laws were trodden under foot; for those laws do not permit any sort of image to be brought into the city.

Nay, besides the indignation which the citizens had themselves at this procedure, a vast number of people came running out of the country. These came zealously to Pilate to Cesarea, and besought him to carry those ensigns out of Jerusalem, and to preserve them their ancient laws inviolable; but upon Pilate's denial of their request, they fell downprostrate upon the ground, and continued immovable in that posture for five days and as many nights.

From The Wars of the Jews by Flavius Josephus Book II section 169

Even though nothing is told of this story in the gospels, the incident took place sometime after Christ's 26th birthday. Most probably Christ was not a part of it, as he was in Galilee, but we cannot know for certain. 

What struck me is the zealousness of the common Jew for the law of God. At the time of Christ, Christians assume that the Jews were lukewarm and the leaders were white-washed tombs of hypocrisy. This story shows the opposite. The Jews were in no way passive. Many were martyred for defending Jerusalem against setting up an image inside its walls. 

As a Catholic, this story makes me a bit ashamed. Where are the tens of millions of Catholics and Christians outside of the US Supreme Court camping out night and day against abortion? Where are we when our modern-day Pilates on both the federal, state and local level enact laws that place the state above God or that go against the very laws of nature? 

Where is our passion for Christ and our passion for righteousness? 

Many Protestants only knew Catholicism through the camera lens of Hollywood in movies like Boy's Town, The Bells of St. Mary, The Sound of Music or San Francisco. We assumed Father Spencer Tracy typified the priest: stubbornly involved in each parishoner's life with gentle wit and inexhaustible wisdom. And that every country pastor flowed with the strength of a Victor Hugo novel:

We admired the movie priest, even if we didn't admire Mary-worshipping, works-righteousness Catholicism. 

Then when our Protestant theology collapsed, when our monotone daguerreotype spirituality became a confusing cyclone and God plopped us down in the technicolored Kingdom of God, we felt a bit like Dorothy opening the door into Oz.

From that first child-like, wide-eyed step in, we believed we had discovered the perfect kingdom over the rainbow. Jesus' church. We were home. Home sweet home. That is the idealism most Protestants find themselves in after they have discovered the Catholic Church. 

We tend to be drawn to the ancient rites and rituals. We are the veil wearers, those who kneel to partake of the Eucharist on the tongue. (Or at least want to.) The Gregorian chants fill us with awe and we rarely want anything that reminds us of our Protestant church services. We don't just want something different, we want something that binds us to our mysterious, Jewishy and bishop-obeying, ancient Christian Church. 

And no matter how much our head warned us that the Catholic Church wasn't perfect, our hearts were sorely disappointed when the priest snapped at us for innocently bringing up the name of Michael Voris or when the media told us the pope was a radical Marxist liberal bringing change to the church on everything from not wearing red Prada's to gay marriage.

Everyone seems to be applauding the change except converts. We came into the church because it wasn't supposed to change. We wanted Father Flannigan and habit-wearing Sister Mary Benedicta in a incense-filled, reverent and Latin singing holy church. What we didn't realize is that we were like Jerusalem pagans converting to Judaism in AD 67. Things don't look so good. The flock seems to be wandering aimlessly with absentee bishops and bedraggled priests. 

The problem is that our expectations were from Hollywood and not scripture. Real life spiritual fathers are no different from real life family fathers. They are imperfect.

And how many of us would look at our fathers and demand that since they were not perfect that God put us in an untrue family and we should convert to another true family. We don't often argue that our biological fathers aren't really who God wanted as our fathers and perhaps the whole system of fatherhood should be tossed out because he was rotten. There was some mix up and we are supposed to leave our family because it isn't as good as the family across the street looks. 

If God appointed our often immature, biological father to be our authority, we have to give our spiritual fathers the same benefit. A perfect church, in fact, wouldn't be the Church Christ started because He compared His church to a net with bad and good fish, a flock of goats and sheep that would be separated, a field of wheat sewn by the enemy with tares. There will be seeds that are weak and seeds that produce fruit of thirty, sixty and a hundred. 

Bad leaders with bad fruit, even wolves and yes, even the antichrist are found within the true church in positions that can be as high as the pope. 

God didn't say follow a perfect church, no He said follow His church. Look for His true, not the perfect.