The home crowd advantage is something that sports teams relish: our turf, our house, our field, our court, our traditions, our fans, etc. Such circumstances make players feel comfortable, like they are in control, and often make a visiting team feel tense and out of sorts. Yet, in the spiritual life, it is exactly the opposite, as we learn to become dissatisfied with a false sense of security in this life and discover the need for some deeper and more lasting truth. Indeed, by having a constant “away game” mindset, we grow in our awareness that our true home is a future reality which we will only ever reach through a lifetime of journeying. The life of Jesus says as much: he was born in an animal stable and laid in a manger (Lk 2:7); when he left Galilee, he “had no place to lay his head” (Lk 9:58); he was executed outside the very walls of Jerusalem, and not even his deathbed was his own (Lk 23:33); yet, as one who spent time in his Father’s house from an early age (Lk 2:9), he was at home among the poor and afflicted and invites us today to abandon our prodigal ways that we may share in the joy of finally being at home with the Father (cf. Lk 15:11-32). Let’s be like Jesus, let’s go home. Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
June 26, 2021
Published
Brothers! This was a wonderful analogy! Oh how to ” abandon our prodigal ways” proves to be a daily effort as we journey HOME to the Father. Alas, many feel it maybe too late to abandon “our ways” to be accepted into OUR FATHER’s HOUSE. I suspect your response will be, let us look to the cross… Ave Crux, Spes Unica.
Margie
Indeed indeed, the cross is that constant interior boundary marker, the point of reference that indicates where God is in our lives. I think of how in the prodigal son story, the slaying of the fattened calf (Christ) is paired with the threshold the prodigal must cross in order to reenter the Father’s House. This journey is so vey good.