Home is where love is

The girl looked on as her mother spoke with a CBS reporter in August about why they are rebuilding in Paradise, Calif. It’s been six years since the horrific Camp Fire destroyed 95 percent of the once-dense forest community. Eighty-five people were killed.

When the reporter asked the teen how she felt about staying in Paradise, she replied, “Home for me was like, kinda like, a place we live in. But home will always be wherever my mom is.”

Put another way, home is where we feel the person who loves us the most is.

In the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the sense of a parish home has been disrupted for many. Half of 59 worship sites are being merged or closed, leaving only 23 fully functional.

It is all part of the archdiocese’s Seek the City to Come plan to address dwindling church attendance and the overwhelming cost of maintaining older parish buildings.

Many affected feel forced to walk away from legacies and bonds they’ve nurtured for decades. Their grief is as genuine as their anger over their helplessness to stop the process.

In a sense, they feel they are being left homeless. Or are they?

Certainly they will miss the rhythm of their lives that has sustained them, connecting them to predecessors and community members. In the midst of this, however, one great truth remains: Mom is still with them.

Christ, who loves them the most and is present in the Eucharist and all sacraments, still beckons for a more intimate relationship.

Thomas Paine, the English-American political propagandist during the American Revolution, famously wrote of the war: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

And, indeed, when sweeping parish reorganizations happen, these too are times that test the faith of some. It all depends on whether that faith rests on where it is lived or on whom it is focused: The Lord Jesus Christ.

I often think about the house I grew up in on Francis Street in Baltimore. At times since we relocated I would have given anything to walk through its doors again.

Remarkably, one day I got that chance. I saw a “For Rent” sign posted outside 2407 with a phone number to call to schedule a tour.

On that tour, I took photos that included:

• the closet once crammed with junk that my siblings and I crawled over when playing hide-and-seek;

• the cellar staircase with no working light switch at the top. Some winter nights it was terrifying to walk down in the dark and then to the back of the cellar to turn on the ceiling light so that we could see to shovel coal into the furnace;

• the backyard where an elderly neighbor installed a large metal sheet between our adjoining steps, blocking us kids as she enjoyed her manicured yard.

I finally confessed to the real-estate agent that I wasn’t a prospective renter. He was gracious about the deception.

The irony is that, after years of taking hundreds of photos, I never lost one roll of film – until then. Why, Lord, why THAT roll, I cried.

I felt the answer in my spirit: Life is a forward-moving journey. We can look back, but not go back or even remain where we are.

Our great comfort as a priestly people challenged to connect with other priestly people is that we do not walk alone. The Lord himself walks with us.

Christ orders our steps as we go from one stage of life to another until we reach our forever home: paradise with him.

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