Safe Home
Long
before I knew what they meant, I just felt blessed by these magic words, spoken
in her soft native Gaelic. Even though
we lived only a block away they carried a protection for us every step of the
way...”Safe Home”...
Aren’t
we always on our way home...the shorter daily mileage only a fraction of the
longer life journey we all have to make....because truly we are ‘home birds’ as
Sr. Fionnuala wrote in her lovely reflection last week. Yes, we’re all ‘homing pigeons’, born with a
‘return ticket’. There is an ache in
our hearts, a sense of incompleteness, a knowing that our hearts are created to
live forever...This wayward restlessness in all of us will only find peace when
we rest in Him. Our spirits echo the
words of Jesus,
‘I
have come from the Father... and now I return to the Father’.
He
has told us that he has gone before us to prepare a place for us. This is what the beautiful feast of the Ascension
celebrates, and when our place is ready He will come to escort us to our real
everlasting Home.
I
always love that passage in St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians:
‘We
know that when this tent we live in is torn down, God will have a house in
heaven for us to live in ...a HOME He himself has made, which will last
forever...’
Yes, we are only campers in this
life, tent dwellers, b
ut God is preparing for us what no eye has seen and no
ear has heard, all that he has prepared for those who love him. Our Carmelite sister poet, Jessica Powers, has
given us a tiny glimpse into the lavish rapturous welcome that we will all receive when God
takes us to himself...
Homecoming
The spirit, newly freed from earth
Is all amazed at the surprise
of her belonging; suddenly
as native to eternity
to see herself, to realise
the heritage that lets her be
at home where all this glory lies.
By naught foretold could she have guessed
such welcome home; the robe, the ring,
music and endless banqueting,
these persons hers, this place of
rest
known, as of long remembering,
herself a child of God and pressed
With warm endearments to His heart...
I’ve
no doubt my Donegal Granny will be there among the welcoming party of blesseds to
embrace me and to whisper...Slán Abhaile, Safe Home!
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