Rather than being a place where the perfected are meeting, it is a meeting of those in need of healing.
Rather than being appalled that there are hypocrites in our midst, we assume there are hypocrites in our midst.
Rather than being scandalized when members aren't perfect, its part of the program.
Not accepted, not held up as the model, but there none the less.
Jesus told us this when He explained that He had come to save those who were sick, not those who were well. In other words, those who knew they needed help.
The Church is a hospital, a place to which people in need of healing come and receive healing, advice and correction; as with a good doctor.
The Church is a hospital in that it is inhabited by the lame, the bent-over, the paralized, those afflicted and tempted.
The Church is a hospital where we receive not medicine merely for the body, but the medicine of everlasting life, of healing of the soul.
The Church is healing of the many holes in my soul that appear from my own sin, holes that "allow the Holy Spirit to leak out." When I confess my sins, receive the other sacraments of the Church (annointing or unction, the Holy Eucharist) the holes begin to heal, to close up so that "the Holy Spirit will be kept inside me."
Rather than punishment or judgment, we receive healing, a balm for our souls.
We see each other as patients.
