I want to thank all of you for your prayers for my father. He’s been in rehab for the last six or
seven weeks and on Wednesday we finally brought him home. It is nice to have him at home.
If you’re not aware he has been declining with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Quite a while ago he began saying, even at home, he began saying, “I want to go home.” We
began to try to figure out, “What do you mean? You are home.” He said, “No, I want to go
home.” My mom would ask him what address, and he would say his childhood address. He
wanted to go home. When we brought him back from the rehab to our house, I was really
excited. I get him got him to sit down and one of the first things he said was, “I need to get up.”
I said, “OK, where do you want to go?” He said, “You guys, I want to go home”, and I thought,
‘We’re there.’
A person has given me a good book on Alzheimer’s, and I’ve been reading it. It talks about
what do you do when somebody asks that question and says repeatedly that they want to go
home? The idea is you try to find out what home means to them. What is it that they are
seeking to go home for? Is it comfort? Is it a place of rest? Is it a place of refuge? Is it
surrounded by your family? Is it things that you remember that had meaning to you?
It got me thinking about the Gospel because Jesus says, “If you listen to my Father and do his
will, my Father and I will dwell in you.” A home is a dwelling place. That is really what it means
to have a home; it is some place to dwell.
It is interesting because the Greek word that is used here is moné. Moné means dwelling or
abode, but moné is also where we get the word monastery from. A monastery is where a
group of monks live together and their whole life is prayer and work and everything surrounds
around the Eucharist, and the Chapel, where they come together seven times a day to pray
and worship.
There is a phrase called the Monastery of the Heart, meaning that Jesus wants to make our
heart His monastery. Everywhere we go in the world, anywhere we go in the world, we can
always feel at home because He dwells within us.
It’s such an amazing thing that as we receive the Eucharist, He takes residence in our hearts.
Another word that dwell is used for is a Manger. Just like He was born in a stable, He becomes
born in our hearts.
We need to think about what home means for you. What does it mean to be home? What does
it mean to dwell somewhere? Now myself, I’ve had a couple of homes. I had a childhood home
which was a three-bedroom ranch and there were six of us kids on Schwab Drive and for me,that home was my first ten years of life. That meant a place of being safe, a place of playing, a place of adventure. We had a park nearby. It’s where I learned to ride my first bike. It was
where I learned to be a child. They were some of the most free, wonderful memories of my life
growing up in that home. Then at 10 years old, we moved to East Linden, which is a colonial,
which is a bigger house, and it was beautiful because there was a Creek in the backyard. For
the next 10 years of my life that became home. That was a place where I grew up in terms of
going to high school and then to college and even when I would go to the seminary. My
siblings are all jealous because I still have my room at my home. It’s still home to me.
As a priest I’ve lived in a lot of different rectories. I probably lived in six or seven rectories over
the years, and I never really felt at home in a rectory until I came here. Maybe it’s because I’m
a pastor, but I feel at home in the rectory. Even in my car, I now moved that to home instead of
my parents’ home. I feel at home here.
Somebody was talking to me recently, a good friend, and he said that he remembers his
mother-in-law, when she moved into assisted living. At first, she used to always say when she
was over at his house, she used to say, “OK, take me back to that place.” She would say that
over and over again until one day she said, “Take me home.” Because that became her home.
For all of us, we have this desire to have a home, to have this dwelling place where we feel
safe and secure. Today, especially after we receive the Eucharist, I’m going to leave a long
moment of silence after communion and I’ll remind you of this, but I just want you to feel the
presence of our Lord, who makes His home in you. He makes his dwelling place in you. He
makes a monastery of your heart. When we know that He is in us, that He is made His home
with us, that He dwells in us, our home is anywhere that we go.
Now our final home is heaven, and that’s the home that we all long and desire and yearn for.
But while we are here on this earth, He wants to make His home in each and every one of us.
Just for a few moments, think about what home means to you. Think about your childhood
home. Think about homes that you’ve lived throughout your life. What were some of those
good memories of what it meant to be home? Allow that to help us realize what it means for
Jesus to make a monastery of our hearts, to dwell in us, to make His home in us.
