Going home!

EVERYDAY, we need to go home, or at least, go to a place where we can rest and feel at ease physically and emotionally, surrounded by people who know and love us, who understand us no matter what we do.

Home is where we can expect security and stability amid the ups and downs of our daily life. It’s where we can be at our most transparent state, showing ourselves as we really are.

It’s like the cradle of our whole life, because even if we are quite old and mature, we continue to be like babies when we consider the full dimensions of our life.

The tragedy of our times is that many homes are not homes as we know and want them, but simply places where we can sleep, and perhaps do our unavoidable and basic personal and physical necessities.

Sad to say, many homes have long been deprived of the atmosphere proper to them—where love and understanding reign, where one recharges not only physically but also spiritually and morally.

Many homes have become dysfunctional for a variety of reasons—absentee parents, lack of family life, poor communication, etc. They have been reduced to offer nothing more than the minimal physical or material comfort. The spiritual and moral dimension is neglected.

So, it’s possible that one can actually be homeless even if he thinks he is at home. The worse scenario is when one doesn’t even have a home to go to at the end of the day, and lives a more or less nomadic life. In fact, there are people who are jokingly referred to as NPA (no permanent address).

How important it is therefore to continually build up the home, ever strengthening the elements and forces that go into its vitality—love and understanding, concern for one another, mutual affirmation, availability, etc.—translating all this into concrete actions and other details and not remaining in the level of ideas and intentions only.

Many people are unaware of that Pauline advice to “bear each other’s burdens,” (Gal 6,2) which is at the core of charity and fraternity in the family. Many couples enter marriage only with good intentions, but ill-equipped to tackle the duties and responsibilities of being spouses and parents. They try to build homes already handicapped.

There are many other issues besetting family and home life these days, and they need to be urgently attended to. In this, not only should the Church be concerned. The government too can contribute a lot—and much more than just giving material support.

Unfortunately, there are moves that show that instead of giving the proper moral and spiritual support, the government is pushing for immoral measures—promoting contraception, moving towards legalization of divorce and same-sex marriage, etc.—that would clearly undermine rather than strengthen the families and the homes.

The problem is that there is that secularistic attitude gripping many government officials who tend to completely ostracize faith, religion and the morals as defined by faith and reason. To them, considering these elements is not politically correct, is undemocratic, or is “ungovernmental.” They have a paganistic outlook.

And this brings us to the real bone of contention. We have leaders in politics and in society who do not realize that our ultimate home is God himself, from whom we come and to whom we belong, not only in a physical way but more so, in the spiritual and intimate way.

We all need to expand and deepen our understanding of home. It’s not just a physical structure, nor even a moral entity but with strictly natural dimensions. We need to go all the way to understand it as being in communion with God and with everybody else. Home is nothing less than that.

This is easier said than done, of course. Thus, we need to do a lot of training, since considering God as home requires us to go beyond strictly natural and human dimensions. It requires us, for example, to expect and find meaning in sacrifice and suffering. And this is not easy, since it goes against our natural tendencies.

Considering God as home involves us to regard prayer, mortification, the sacraments, ascetical struggle, developing virtues, etc., like the eating, drinking, comfort, fun, relaxation, affection, etc. as the essential elements in the natural sense of home life.

Saints who have achieved to be at home with God go to their prayer and sacrifice the way we normally look forward to our family meals and get-togethers.