Home in the New Year

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!

I hope and pray that the holiday season has been a joy for all the wretches and their families, even though these events usually afford an extraordinary opportunity for wretchedness.

Remember, there is no wretchedness that is a match for His mercy! This line was on the back of Deacon Ryan’s ordination card, with the Divine Mercy image on the front. Amen, my friend.

At the Christmas Vigil, I found myself sitting between a zealous older gentleman and a woman who did not appreciate his zeal. In reflecting on the Spirit as unity and that unity as being what makes us “bear with” one another- in the true sense of that, which is not negative (c.f. Ratzinger, “Spirit of unity”…. Or something like that)- I believe hers was the greater transgression. Her noble desire for silence does not justify her expression of annoyance. We would all receive the Eucharist together, one after another, professing that we are one Body. In that moment, I think we were called to “bear with” him in love and smile indulgently at our “adopted great uncle” who sometimes talks a little before mass.

Sr. Morning has been reflecting on what “home” is; how Fr. A said that as you grow in this journey you begin to realize that Home is a Person.

And suddenly, it makes sense to feel more at home with people you “hardly know” who share your faith and are living in and walking towards Christ than with people you have known all your life that do not think of Him. You look around a room, and either marvel that people who are so different from you yet share this profound sense of the meaning of everything… or you look around at people who look a lot like you, but have a totally different conception of what reality is. It’s wild.

Other profound homey places are World Youth Day and the March for Life (affectionately called by wave “the Catholic family reunion”). In the midst of these crowds—with the exception of some of the crazies at the march— you sense the Spirit and the unity of love.

Spice, halfway across the country, wrote something about home in her Christmas card to me. She wrote that “we always seem to be making our way home”. Always already, almost-but-not-yet, both and. We are home, yet not, and not home, yet home. None of which makes sense if you do not know Christ; Home is always moving because He is a person.

Listening to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, the Moldau movement, conducted by Ferenc Fricsay, is Home.