Coming Home

This weekend St. Bridget celebrated Confirmation with the Archbishop at our 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass, and I wound up giving the homily at the other two Masses. It's the same amount of preparation for a homily even if you give it twice (or once) instead of at every Mass, but that's just the way things go.

It was really just fortune (or the Holy Spirit) that I wound up watching the movie "Home Alone" on the Friday beforehand. Joan was out for the evening, and I wasn't tired enough for sleep. I had, as usual, done some thinking about the homily, and was especially moved by the first reading (Baruch 5:1-9), so I immediately made the connection. Here it is:

Sometimes when I prepare for a homily, I will read something or watch a particular movie that has a connection with the scriptures that I am preparing for, in the hope of getting some good content to use in the homily. For instance, a few weeks ago, as we neared the feast of Christ the King and the end of the liturgical year, a feast that is often associated with the end of time, I went to see the movie 2012, and believe me, I saw a lot of images of apocalyptic destruction: earthquakes, tidal waves, chasms opening in the earth, molten fire erupting from within the earth… It was actually pretty entertaining, but I really didn’t really find anything that I could use in my homily for Christ the King Sunday.

But last night I ran across a movie just by accident, and it’s probably one that you’ve seen too. It was the movie “Home Alone.” It was filmed in 1990, so it’s been around for a while, and it has a Christmas theme, since it’s the story of a very large family leaving on a trip to celebrate Christmas in Europe. However, they all oversleep on the morning they’re supposed to go, and in the panic to dress and get to the airport on time, they leave their youngest child at home, a 5-year-old named Kevin. They’re in two vans going to the airport, and they all sit in different places in the airplane, and so they don’t really discover their loss until it’s too late, and then of course they can’t easily get back home because all the flights back to the US are booked up.

Now if you’ve seen the movie, you probably remember that most of the comedy comes from a pair of thieves who try to break into the home, and run into all the traps that Kevin sets. It really is a funny movie, at least the first time you see it. This was probably the 6th or 7th time I watched it… but then, I’m one of those odd persons who can enjoy watching the same movie time and time again.

But there is one particularly heartwarming part of the story, and that’s what goes on with this grumpy old man who lives across the street from the family. He’s the kind of guy that the neighborhood kids tell scary stories about, and of course Kevin has a short encounter with him at the grocery store that scares him out of his wits and sends him screaming out of the store. However, later in the movie, before the thieves break in, Kevin stops at the neighborhood church, while the choir is practicing for the Christmas service, and the old man is sitting there watching his granddaughter sing. The old man introduces himself, and they begin a short conversation. Kevin tells him that he’s feeling really sorry that his family is gone, especially because he said some hurtful things to them the night before they left. And the old man tells him that he’s sorry too – that years ago, he and his son had gotten into an argument, and he told his son that he never wanted to talk to him again, and his son answered back the same angry way. And – they never did. And that’s why he was in church, because they still weren’t talking, and he couldn’t see his granddaughter any other way. Kevin tells him that he should call his son and tell him he’s sorry, but the old man is still afraid to call, because he’s afraid that his son still won’t want to talk to him.

Well, at the end of the movie... it’s Christmas morning, the thieves have been arrested, the family arrives back home, and everyone is glad to be together again for Christmas… and Kevin looks out the window, to see a car out in front of the old man’s house, with the old man greeting his son, and lifting up his granddaughter in a huge, tearful hug. [I love that – I’m pretty sentimental.]

I think that joyful homecoming is just a touch of the joy of another homecoming, one that we hear about from our first reading today, the book of Baruch! Only this homecoming is multiplied over and over again, for every one of the people of Israel. You see, the setting for this prophecy is that Jerusalem had been conquered, its homes destroyed, its very temple destroyed, the people led away on foot into captivity. And the many of the books of the Old Testament tell of the sorrow and suffering of the people while in captivity. But finally after years of exile, the prophet Baruch says, “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem! Put on the robe of God’s justice, put on your head the crown of God’s glory! Arise, Jerusalem, look toward the sun, and see all your children gathering from the east and the west at God’s word, rejoicing that God has remembered them. For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and the valleys be filled up, to make level ground so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God!” Wow! What joy they must have felt!

Now it also happens that our gospel uses words like today to describe the ministry of John the Baptist. His purpose, though, is to urge the people to repent -- because the Lord is coming. There is a need for us to straighten out the crooked parts of ourselves, to smooth out the parts that we’ve allowed to get rough -- just as that old man in the movie Home Alone needed to call his son and say he was sorry. That reaching out was what made his tears of joy possible!

Advent for us is a time when WE should anticipate great joy – but there’s a need for some preparation on our part. Even our secular world knows that – look how much effort our culture puts into preparing for Christmas!

And so we need to put that same time and effort into preparing our hearts as well as our holiday. How do we do it? Christmas is one special time when we can naturally look at ourselves, remembering past years, and past Christmasses, to really see the people and relationships we have on this Christmas, this year. Are there habits that we have gotten into over the last year or years – habits of being too busy, or of blocking out the people or things that matter? Is there someone we might call that we’ve somehow lost track of, or someone to say we’re sorry to, for the brokenness of our relationship, or something else in the past? And what about our relationship with God – maybe we haven’t taken enough time for that most basic and important of all our relationships.

We often say that Christmas is a magical time. Well, it IS a magical time. And yet, it’s not really magical; it doesn’t happen by itself. It takes some preparation on our part. Prepare the way of the Lord!