We have no home here.

Roland Flores
2 days ago
3 min read

We have no home here.

Ave Maria, May Our Immaculate Lady, Assumed into heaven, together with St. Joseph, St. Philip Neri and All saints, pray for us! This last Ascension Thursday, I spent the day preparing for my Grandmother’s funeral and burial. Earlier in the year my grandmother was diagnosed with terminal Cancer. She had the grace to receive the traditional last rites, to die wearing the brown scapular, and had a Sung Requiem Mass was said for her. Still I implore you all to pray for her eternal repose. In the chaos that comes with planning a funeral, I still managed to attend a beatiful Sung Mass for Acension Thursday. At Mass I read these words in the Collect: "our Saviour to have this day ascended into the heavens, so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell" and these from the epsitle: "while they looked on, he was raised up." These words stayed with me until her Funeral, where two images stood out too me. First was an “Easter Cross” with no Corpus at her parish. Secondly, there was a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which had been crowned earlier in the month.

At her Requiem Mass at my parish there was also a crowned Statue of Our Lady of Fatima. All these sacred words and images all proclaimed a simple truth: We have no home here. The first question Sister Lucia asked the Lady at Fatima was this: "where are you from?" Our Lady responded: " I come from heaven." Which brings me to the first image, the bare easter Cross. When I first saw it, I thought: where is our Lord? Then the thought came: He is in Heaven. Our Lord, like our Lady, was sinless. He did not have to leave, and yet He did. "Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). One of the reasons He did this, the same reason He remains here with us Hidden in the Eucrhaist, is to teach us we have no home here. Our Home is in Heaven. This was not only echoched by the Easter Cross and the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, but by my Grandmothers empty house. What was once such an vibrant home was now an empty shell full of dusty memories. In her little kitchen stood an icon of St. Francis and his words rang in my head: "Woe to you who depend on this world. Can it be that you are of it? Rather flee, and condemn it. Lest you also perish with it… oh Jesus you have chosen me from this

world what then is there for me in it? You created me for heaven. What then do I want for myself from you in a world in which I suffer? Away with you oh world, with your vanities! I shall eagerly march on the way of the cross which My Savior signed with his sacred Footprints and I shall make for that Heavenly Homeland where there is dwelling and rest for eternity." Our Home is in heaven, it is the desitanation that Christ wills for us to follow Him to. I will close this ver rash but heavy dicussion with the Words of Pope Clement XI: Discover to me, O my God, the nothingness of this world, the greatness of heaven, the shortness of time, the length of eternity. Grant that I may be prepared for death, fear Thy judgments, escape hell, and, in the end, obtain heaven. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.