In April of 1996, I received one of the most significant gifts of my life.
I stepped foot on Notre Dame’s campus for the first time after being offered a spot in their upcoming law school class. Although it was unlikely I would attend somewhere so far from my Alabama home and where I knew no one, I felt a subtle urge to see it before making a final decision. So my dad—an ardent Catholic who believed Notre Dame the only real elite university—decided we should make a road trip.
My father and I therefore spent a day auditing law school classes, meeting other Catholic students, walking through a snow-dusted campus, circling the loop between St. Mary and St. Joseph lakes, attending a Mass at the Basilica, going to confession, and lighting a candle at the Grotto. I was mesmerized by it all.
I had spent my entire life in the South, where the open practice of Catholicism was mostly restricted to inside my church and home. I had never seen my faith and all of its elements—the academic, the communal, the theological, the social, the spiritual—so freely breathing in open space. It was consequently the first time that I felt a fusion of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and little old me, as one.
As we began to head back to Alabama, I pondered it all in the silence of our car. And then I heard these words: “You are home.”
I quickly realized these words weren’t from my father or my imagination because my father confirmed, “You know, it’s weird, but I keep hearing someone say, ‘You’re home.’”
In that moment, I knew I received God’s call “home”—to a place that was not just physical but spiritual, one where I could abide in God’s will and follow His plans.
Home.
It occurred to me then that the call “home” was a personal call to join God in a place where the eternal meets the here and now. Perhaps it was the same “home” Jesus tells his disciples about in John 14:23 when he says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
I admit, though, that the older I get, the harder I find it to hear this call or to feel like I have found such a “home.” Sure, I have glimpses of it still, particularly when I attend Mass and receive the sacraments, dance with my children in the driveway, or take a morning stroll with my husband. The world throws out so many burdens and expectations, however, I find myself feeling more like what St. Peters calls a “sojourner” or “exile” on earth. And I begin to wonder or doubt if I’m lost.
It occurred to me today, though, that home isn’t always a place to receive, but one I must also learn to give.
Afterall, that’s what Jesus taught his own disciples, isn’t it?
As Jesus approached his time of Crucifixion, He knew His disciples would no longer have His immediate presence to guide them. He also knew they would make mistakes because of it. But because He had created a home within them with His Word and spirit, they would in turn share it with others. He even prays to His Heavenly Father for them, saying:
The glory that you have given me I have given them, that they may one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17: 22-24)
Of course, giving is always harder than receiving. We are ordinary people, and left to our own devices, we are prone to sin and a worship of self. We can fall victim to doubt or even depression without the consolation, affirmation, and gifts we desire. But growing in our faith should also sow the kind of maturity that understands life—and all we do in it—isn’t just about us. It’s about bringing our life and those with whom we encounter into eternal salvation. After all “greater love has no one than this, ‘that someone lay down his life for his friends’” (John 15:13).
So today, I’m hoping to open and offer this home to others. I’ll also leave you with a clip from the 2016 live-streamed reenactment of The Passion that captures this sentiment well. I hope it inspires you to think of ways to call others to the home we all desire.
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