Contemplating Home

Clairity of Clairity's Place reflects on the authentic experience of home.

Consider what she has to say here:

Fr. Giussani comments on the home that we are always moving toward on our life's journey.

The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of the Patriarchs who lived in the Promised Land, but they had another, more permanent city (see Heb. 11:9-10). This is the feeling with which we must live in our homes, work, society, everywhere.

In Psalm 85, the psalmist speaks of the land given to Israel for a home: "Lord, thou was favorable to thy land; thou didst restore the fortunes of Jacob."

Fr. Giussani writes of our infidelities and how God continually brings us back home.

We are His land. How often he brought us back from exile, from the lie that exploited our weakness, our laziness, slackness, small-mindedness, opposition! He brought us back from the exile imposed by the lie that used our restlessness, our presumption, or our taste for power against us! The principle of evil imposed this exile in us, but we were the sons of Jacob, God's land. How often He has brought back the fortunes of Jacob!

The people of Israel was a tribe, a people. They were this home where God dwells. They were a community. We think of God's providence in abstract terms, and then we go on with our lives to fend for ourselves. And yet, in a time of loss and desperation, our dependence on God comes to the fore, and on those who recognize him. A Christian community must be a place where fear is dispersed because one is not left alone. This is the survival plan for the worst case scenario, the charity of the home which embraces even strangers as our own neighbors.

We are truly at home only when we are in the presence of God. For what is home but a place of communion with those we love, and who love us? God is Love, so therefore, when we live in communion with him, we live in communion with Love.

But we know from painful experience that we do not consistently live in communion with Love. We follow temptation's sweet seductions and surrender to it's bitter fruit, sin. We quarrel over issues both trivial and monumental. We hurt one another when we ought to love and support one another. We often do so over and over. Thus, we lose sight of home. Sometimes, we even make the place that should be home our exile.

Thanks be to God that he is patient with us. He awaits our return to him. He longs to shower his mercy and forgiveness on us, if only we ask him. If only we let go of our darkness and open up our hearts to his wonderful light. When we do, we find ourselves home again.

We begin our experience of home when we unite with the presence of God in our lives here and now. We experience the fullness of home when we live in communion with the Blessed Trinity in Eternity. Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through whom we all get to come home!