So appropriate somehow...

A disclaimer: I am a Catholic. Practicing, even. Ridiculously Catholic, some might say. OK, they do say it. S'ok. If the scapular fits...

So to someone who's "ridiculously Catholic", what could be more sacred than a trip to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe than a lively pilgrimage of approximately 2000 ... clowns?!?!?

My first visit to the Basilica was itself part of a pilgrimage - people from two parishes coming together to spend a week in Mexico City, kicked off with Mass at the Basilica concelebrated by three priests who had served at one or both of the parishes over the past few years. It was an amazing day, an amazing event, one that changed my life in so many ways, including some I probably won't fully grasp for years to come. I was looking at photos from that visit tonight, and felt so grateful - so very, very grateful - for that trip, that Mass, this sacred place.

But today, my 8th or 9th or so visit to a site that's so holy, so precious to me - it was somehow appropriate to encounter the clowns. I never quite figured out where they were from, although it was clearly planned - they occupied the space reserved for pilgrims who have reserved a Mass, and even the Lector was in costume. (Hold the cracks about the presider, ok? I've heard 'em all already...)

Right now, to be a believing and practicing Catholic, I think one might need to be a bit nutty, a bit tolerant of insanity, and a bit willing to see beyond various masks, piles of make-up, and even a fake rubber nose here and there to find the Child of God beneath the artifice. One has to step back and not take this 'life' thing too seriously, and certainly not this 'Church' thing. After all, from what I remember the nuns teaching me as a kid, Jesus wandered around looking very foolish himself, saying stuff like "love your enemies" and talking about God keeping an eye on sparrows, so hey, why worry about ourselves? Craziness, right?

As I often say, I've yet to encounter anything in the gospels that indicate that Christ came to earth in order to bring us religion couched in the most vast bureaucracy and rigid rhetoric known to humanity. Maybe that's in the later books, the ones we get to read after we master that "learn to be loved by God, and share God's love freely with one another" part. I still struggle mightily with that first assignment, so I'll likely never get to the part that's more serious, that's not able to laugh at itself. That's OK. My faith can handle a few clowns. Indeed, perhaps they're precisely what the Church needs right now.

When I rode the moving walkway underneath the Image of Guadalupe today, I looked up, and although I've gazed upon her face dozens of times here, she seemed to be smiling at the scene before her, especially the crowd of pilgrims in funny shoes and facepaint. We are all loved, silliness and masks we hide behind and all. She knows us, she sees us, she loves us, and is is good. So very, very good.