He is, and ever shall be

Infallible, a dangerous word.
Unchangeable, the same.
What is this ‘unchanging Orthodoxy’ we hear them tell of?

The former, like an idol carried about by the uninformed, as they apply it to popes’ pronouncements, or to divine and sacred scriptures, or as they try to out-ape each other’s flattery of the Church, is easily toppled from its pedestal. Christ does not say anywhere that anyone or anything is infallible. He only says of the Church that Hades shall never prevail against it, and of Peter, that after he recovers from his denial, he must strengthen his brothers.

The latter, as for unchangeable, this requires erudition and discernment, for much that we claim as unchangeable is not, and as for unchanging, on earth only Christ is that, just as He is in heaven.

It would be a difficult debate to decide which of the dangerous words is more lethal, which has distorted the Message of Christ more, but both ideas have led the Church down a world-conquering path far removed from the victory that Christ has won for us when He was lifted up to draw all men to Himself, when He descended to the depths to capture souls to present to His Father, and when He emerged from the bridal chamber of His all-holy tomb.

A new and bright age is always ready to open before us. We are no less at the forefront of Christ’s call and His commands than were His first disciples. He is as present with us as He was with them during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. He is constantly with us, among us, though like them we often don’t recognize it is He who comes. We think that the world goes on as it always has, and solace ourselves by what we think infallible or unchanging, and miss Him as He walks by.

For only One is infallible, unchangeable because unchanging, that is Christ, but because He is all in all, because in Him we live and move and have our being, it is not in our thoughts, our ideas, that we must take refuge, but in His, in what He, the living and life-giving God, speaks to us here and now, for beyond all human expectation, He has indeed risen from the dead, and He is in our midst.

He is, and ever shall be.