At home

Irish Dominican Thomas McCarthy has been writing the weekly Advent reflection this year in The Tablet.

This is his reflection for the Third Sunday in Advent.

It makes for an interesting read.

Our eyes welcome only as much light as we can bear. They develop as we grow; they open gradually wider, seeing further and in more and more detail. The heart, responding to what is seen, comes to love, hope and believe. Some know only pain, abandonment and disillusion: for them the eyes grow dim. 

Those who suffer acutely can be forgiven for not wishing to see any more, or to be seen. As night falls, they seek shelter in doorways, their wintry plight a mirror of the weather they endure. Hope ebbs from their heart’s shore. They are truly the homeless in our society.

But there are others, who may live quite near us, perhaps in material comfort, whose pain remains largely unseen. I mean those who seek to “keep the bright side out”, if only to avoid questions about their well-being. Yes, they have a roof over their heads, but, inside, they are homeless, despite their bland, dismissive assurances: “I’m fine, thanks.”

They include wonderful souls whose marriages have soured, leaving them lonely even in the middle of a family. And among them too must be counted priests burnt out by the stress of their beleagured profession, and Religious sisters and brothers no longer at ease in the communities they joined. 

Some may have found an inner “eye” that reaches further, or a zeal that outstretched anything currently evident in the cloister: a generosity of spirit frustrated when the image portrayed by the order they joined has become little more than a façade. Such hearts, too, are homeless.

There is homelessness also in a soul that is impatient. “Be vigilant and pray – this is how to live this time from today until Christmas,” Pope Francis said at the beginning of Advent. These four weeks are “a time to open our hearts and to ask ourselves concrete questions about how we spend our lives and for whom.” We need time to enable a fruitful change of heart. 

The growth and flowering of life takes time. Life is best not rushed. The rate of adjusting our behaviour can depend on how much light the eyes of faith can bear at any given moment. Unless the homeless soul can learn the grace of waiting it may not discover that, as Hermann Hesse wrote, “Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.” 

It is not a purse or a wallet that is needed to alleviate the pain of the homeless soul. A listening ear is more apt, and the alertness that senses unease in a sister’s or brother’s “living and partly living”. As we “go forth” when Mass is ended, we are summoned to seek out the lost, including those sheltered under the same roof as us.

What can sometimes inflame the eye and inspire the heart is the image of dreams coming “one size too big” for us. The challenge is often to be patient, to “grow into them”.

One step at a time. In the spiritual life, questions are easily posed, of ourselves and of others. The provision of the “correct” answers does not guarantee a quick fix. The process is best not rushed. Perhaps we need to be “still and still moving”.

Jesus, who, while still very young, is depicted by Luke as having being discovered by his anxious parents to be asking questions in the Temple, later challenged disciples who were no doubt as “full of years” as those Temple doctors likely were. They could not be expected to imagine it, but in fact the young visitor was more at home in that Temple than they were.