The Fullness of the Faith the Apostles Knew

Susan Matthiesen writes of the struggles of almost losing the Faith in the 'Church of Nice' and the utter joy of finding it again.

From Les Femmes

By Susan Matthiesen

I looked and I looked but I never found,
In the bricks and mortar of a church in the round,
The fullness of the Faith the Apostles knew,
Peter and James, John and Andrew.
 
I sighed and I sighed and in despair,
Frustrated and tired I searched for You,
While time slid by and the decades flew,
The heresies heard burned my eyes with tears,
While my heart was torn and trampled upon,
And my Faith shriveled until it was nearly gone.
 
Oh, I looked and I sighed but could never find,
The depth of the Faith I knew God had designed.
I searched and I searched for the pearl of great price
In the pablum-laced modern Church of nice.
 
And I in my longing, my face turned to the sun,
Spiritually bedraggled, worn and rundown,
With tears in my eyes, asked God where He’d gone.
Silly in the sunlight crying like that…
Was it silly to cry for a vanished Faith,
Ripped from the world, now with no grace?
 
I looked with gloom at the bleak rot and decay,
And saw one church still waiting to try,
Though for years I’d always believed in the lie.
“They’re in schism", I had been warned away.
“What? More in schism than Covid churches with no Mass?”
So I marched into the SSPX and never looked back.
 
The longing is over, the Faith is still there,
The Old Mass in its glory almost too beautiful to bear.
Never changing the Faith since the years of Our Lord’s call,
The SSPX, through God’s mercy, thankfully kept it all -
The fullness of the Faith the Apostles knew,
Peter and James, John and Andrew.