3rd Sunday after Easter 3.5.09 Our true home
Our Lord compares our suffering to a woman in labour. She suffers a lot of pain for a certain amount of time, and then the pain not only stops but turns to joy as she sees her baby born.
Our suffering in this life has two forms. One form of suffering is all the things that go wrong for us, everything from stubbing our toe on the chair to our lament for the irreligious state of the world, everything large or small that is other than the way we want it to be.
The other form of suffering is less obvious. It is the deeper suffering of not yet seeing our true home. We are refugees, looking for home. If we never suffered pain in this life we would still not be completely happy because we are not yet where we truly belong.
Our true home is in heaven. Earth is an exile, a place of pilgrimage. We need to get out of here and into our true home.
Granted we can be comfortable here, and that is precisely a major temptation to us: that this life appears to offer happiness but it is never the complete happiness that we seek. Many have suffered shipwreck in the faith trying to find heaven here, exchanging eternal happiness for passing pleasure.
Until we walk in the door of heaven we will be like that woman in labour. Our Lord consoles us in the meantime with a glorious hope. It does make things a lot easier if we have something definite to look forward to.
The Lord relieves our sufferings in both forms. Things will continue to ‘go wrong’, though through prayer we can at least reduce the number of those things. But the suffering that really counts – that we are not yet home – well, that is coming to an end. We just have to make sure we stay close enough to Him, that when our time to leave this world comes we are within reach of His mercy.
An exile never forgets his homeland, yet we can forget heaven as we get caught up in worldly matters. We are tempted to think that God has forgotten us; that He will never return. But when we turn to Him in prayer we receive His reassurance. Any apparent absence on His part is only to increase our longing for Him, and to intensify our prayer for His aid.
He will not leave us orphans. He has set up a system of protection for us, through the Church and the sacraments. We have more access to Him than we might realize. Granted we cannot see Him, but we can feel the power of His presence as we approach Him in the sacraments, and obey His teaching through the Church.
When all seems dark and we feel all alone the best thing to do is reassert our faith in Jesus Christ and call upon Him. He will do something good for us, we can be sure, even if we may not be able to predict what it is.
Living with a passionate desire to reach our true home in heaven will help us cope with any sense of loss here on earth. We will not be so heartbroken when someone or something we love is taken from us, realizing everything here is just passing.
The people we ‘lose’ through death, we hope to reclaim in eternity, once we have all passed through.
The things we enjoy on earth will be found bigger and better in heaven, whether in the same or different form - but we will suffer no loss.
All this is within our grasp if only we stay close to the Good Shepherd. May He call us safely home.
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