ONE does not have to look very far these days to find in the papers some fairly horrendous story about the Church. Whether it is the abuse of young boys or women, the constant squabbling over what is right and what is true, the role played by organised religion in violent conflicts through history and around the world, there is almost always something to read. Faced with this, can anyone, any sensible person, believe in the Church?

Perhaps, but certainly not in the empirical Church, the Church we see every day with the eyes of the body; the Church as it struggles through history towards the End. That Church, as institution, is deeply touched by the Fall, profoundly affected by the discontinuity between what its members believe about mankind and life as they live it. The Church we can believe in, can have faith in, however, is the Body that has been touched by God. Not only touched by God, but penetrated by God, made one with God, first by Christ, the Son of God become the Son of Man, and then through those who have had the audacity to join themselves to him.

The Church is a mystery. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh once said: “The mystery of the Church consists in the fact that it is a body, a living organism which is simultaneously and equally both human and divine.” Though this may be true at depth, it is not true in our everyday experience, where in the empirical Church the “human” often seems to predominate, and God and the hidden ways of God are pushed into the background.

There is one area, however, where God is not, and cannot be, pushed into the background by human sin, and that is in creation. As St Athanasius once pointed out: “Nothing in creation had erred from the path of God’s purpose for it, save only Man. Sun, Moon, Heaven, stars, water, air, knowing the Word as their maker and their king, remained as they were made.” But we do not.

The relationship between believer and Church is much the same as the relationship between any human being and the created Universe. In both cases we can experience at times a painful gap between what our role should be and what it is. In both cases the “deep structure”, the invisible underpinning in energy and form, is provided by the Father through the Son, while the gap between this and the empirical, sinful reality is provided by us.

The created world with all its beauty is the gift of a loving God. Our very existence is a gift. But a gift always calls for something to be given in return, something that reflects the value of the original gift and generosity of the original giver. What gift can we give in return for our existence? Christ refers to this directly when he asks: “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark viii, 37)

The answer is already there in the preceding verse: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Clearly, for Christ the Universe itself is not worth one human soul. The only gift that could possibly be adequate is the gift of one’s “soul”; the gift of one’s whole existence. The gift of my whole life, however, is not a gift commensurate with my existence as created by God. I am not the person I was created to be, and my offering of myself will always be less than I have received. Has an adequate gift ever been offered?

In this period before the Feast of the Nativity of Christ it is important to know that we can say “yes”. The Fiat of Mary, the Mother of God, which involved the surrender of the whole of her life to the will of God, was just such a gift.

Because she was without sin, her life was a life as it should be lived, in utter harmony with the ways of God. She was at one with the deep structure of her own being and thus with the deep structure of the universe. And into this friendly environment God could come. In no other woman — in no other human being — could he have felt at home.

The oneness of the human race means that Mary’s offering is our offering as well. This is spelt out poetically in a hymn from the Eastern Orthodox celebration of the Nativity: “What shall we offer thee, O Christ, who for our sakes hast appeared on Earth as man? Every creature made by thee offers thee thanks. The angels offer thee a hymn; the heavens a star; the Magi, gifts; the shepherds, their wonder; the Earth, its cave; the wilderness, the manger: and we offer thee a Virgin Mother, O pre-eternal God.”

Bishop Basil of Sergievo is head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain.