“They may not know the breaking wheel, but many have their young hearts broken, like Blessed Margaret of Castello, whose parents abandoned her because she was blind and physically deformed.”
Eden said that the other way in which the saints' lives relate to the issue is through the way they lived out the Church's teaching on redemptive suffering.
“God does not merely heal our wounds; if we unite our hearts to Him through His Son, whose own wounds are now glorified, He heals us through our wounds,” she said.
Eden also addressed the issue of sexual abuse within the Church, saying that as a faith community, we “have all heard about the very real and often devastating experiences of those who, as children, were abused by clergy or by members of religious orders.”
“It is very important that the truth about what has happened be brought into the open.”
“However,” she added, “there is a much larger population whose pain is not being discussed, and should be.”
Eden said that the overwhelming majority of child sex abuse instances are committed not by clergy, but by family members – about one-third to one-half of cases – or other acquaintances of the abused.
She noted that according to a 2010 government study, nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 14 men in America report having been abused as children.
“Such painful memories afflict at least one person on every pew in every parish,” Eden said.
“I want to let these members of the Mystical Body of Christ know that they are not alone, they are not forgotten, and they have more friends in heaven than they realize,” she underscored.
On a deeper level, Eden said she wants to highlight the truth that understanding the fatherhood of God is essential before one can comprehend the idea of marriage.
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We “have to understand ourselves as children of God before we can understand ourselves as the Bride of Christ,” she said.
“In the rush to teach the faithful about the connection between spousal love and the love of the Trinity, I believe we have unwittingly left behind many people who cannot comprehend spousality because they lack a foundational understanding of God's fatherly love,” Eden said.
“These are the people I hope to help bring back to the fold.”
Marianne is a journalist with a background in writing and Catholic theology. When not elaborating on the cinematic arts, she enjoys spending time with people, reading thick books and traveling anywhere and everywhere.