My Relationship with the Church

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 Carretto, The God Who Comes