Last Stand

Keeping our hearts close to the altar of Christ

04/27/2018

John 14:1-6 Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.”  Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

It may be tempting to parrot the proverb, “Home is where the heart is,” but how do we define our home? If we take a second look, we will discover that our understanding of “home” undergoes quite an evolution over the course of our lives. That survey is well worth our serious study.

Every American dreams of one day owning their own home. We grow up in our parents’ home, then move into a college dormitory, then we rent an apartment, then we move into our parents’ basement, and then they finally kick us out and we buy our own home. But is that home where the heart is? Is that where we make our “last stand” like Colonel Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn? I don’t think so.

When my parents moved from India to the United States in 1976, they always dreamed of going back “home” to India. But when the family went on vacation to India one simmering summer, where the temperatures hovered around 115 degrees, the kids all clamored, “We want to go home!” For my brother, sister and me, “home” was the United States and my parents dream of retiring in India seemed to us more like a nightmare. My parents are now comfortably retired in Little Rock; a new last stand for them. How many grandparents move from place to place chasing their millennial children who move frequently so they can be close to their grandchildren? No last stand for them. How often we see “white flight” because of undesirable ethnic changes to a neighborhood. Someone’s last stand feels more like a one night stand. Our home is indubitably where the heart is, but our heart has a hard time settling down. Where is our “last stand”?

Jesus suggests to us how we should ultimately understand our home, from an eternal perspective. He comforts his forlorn disciples saying, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” Jesus helps us take the next step in the evolution of our understanding of our home. Instead of looking at our “last stand” as anywhere on earth, he invites us to see our true home as the Father’s house in heaven. That heavenly home is where our heart should be: not in Montana at the Battle of Little Big Horn, not in a bungalow in Bangalore, India, not next door to where your kids and grandkids reside. Home is where the heart is, and our hearts should be in heaven, where Jesus has prepared a dream home for us.

Whenever we finish a funeral here in church, I return to the sacristy and announce to our sacristan: “Well, Isabelle, we sent someone else home.” That remark is not just a pious platitude, an off-handed comment to fill the awkward silence, but a sober statement of faith. Our beloved dead have moved closer to their “last stand” which we pray fervently will be a heavenly home (not somewhere too warm). Sometimes, we worry overmuch about where we will be buried, in a cemetery or in a columbarium, and how that home for our remains will appear. Some people have requested they not be neighbors to so-and-so in the columbarium for all eternity, as if that spot were their “last stand.”

St. Augustine recalled his mother St. Monica’s final wishes of where to be buried. Augustine’s brother, Navigius, did not want his mother to be buried in a foreign country (Italy). She reprimanded them both saying, “Lay this mortal body to rest wherever you will: do not worry about tending the grave. All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you will remember me at the Lord’s altar” (Confessions, IX, 11). St. Monica, and St. Augustine, had a clear conception of their “last stand,” namely, the altar at the Mass. The closer you get to the altar, the closer you come to your heavenly home, and that’s where your heart should be.

Praised be Jesus Christ!