Thoughts On My Trip Back Home

My husband and I just got back from visiting my home state of Indiana for about two weeks. It was a wonderful but too fast of a time at home with loved ones and just returning to where I left my heart. Of course, I have to throw this in!

Back home again in Indiana
And it seems that I can see
The gleaming candlelight, still shining bright
Thru the sycamores for me
The new mown hay sends all its fragrance
From the fields I used to roam
When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash
Then I long for my Indiana home

It was our third trip home since moving to Montana, but this trip was different because we are different. It was our first trip home since we have re-committed ourselves to our faith. It was our first trip home since we’ve really prayed, read, and spoke together about God. It was our first trip home since going to Confession, ridding ourselves of all the habits and sins that we confessed, and understanding the evils and eternal implications of sin. We see and feel more with our souls than our bodies, and that made this trip home very different.
 
I got to see, with a new perspective and understanding, the environment that I grew up in. The life that shaped my Catholic faith, instead of the other way around. It was an environment of typical American Catholicism, where my life, the culture, and everything/everyone around me, dictated my faith, instead of my faith guiding my life and leading me to be counter-cultural. It was an environment where I never understood Jesus’ words, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19) Obviously, no human wants to be hated and rejected, and it’s easy to slip into the comfort zone where you can keep your faith but camouflage it enough so that no one challenges it. But honestly if you’re not seeing any sort of hardship for your faith, then something is wrong; you’re too conformed to the world and not to the Truth.
 
The whole time I was home, I couldn’t help but notice that most people around me seemed so lost, and by that I mean, completely consumed and concerned with “worldly” things. Even those who believe in Jesus Christ were not on fire with love, but more or less just lukewarm, proclaiming Christ with their lips (if they did at all) rather than their heart and actions, because their hearts were elsewhere. I recalled constantly the parable of the sower from Matthew 13:
 

On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore. And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

“Hear then the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit. But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”

 

I thought particularly of the seed sown among the thorns, and I felt like that is what I saw all around me. Material possessions, money, education, staying busy, pleasing the body, comfort, careers, success—all these seemed to be the things that everyone revolved around. It hurt my soul to see it for all of its ugliness for the first time. “No one can serve two masters.  He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (‘mammon’ meaning ‘wealth’… Matthew 6:24)

 

Yes, it hurt me to see this, but it still gave me hope. The seed, the growing plant of the Word, is still there in most people, and I know that. I could see it in the smiles, in the love that people showed to one another, in the way that people were still drawn to God even if they didn’t feel anything or had doubts. The seed, the hope, the Holy Spirit’s fire is there, but there are just so many weeds that choke it, never letting it reach its full potential. You can get rid of the weeds. But first you have to see the weeds. What is it that you put most of your time, effort, or thought into? Is it several hours of TV each day? Is it food? Is it the internet? Are your thoughts consumed by how much you have to do? Things you didn’t get done? Ways to make your appearance or your house look nice? Diets and exercise? New cars? If you made a pie chart of your day, how much of it is filled by all this extra, unnecessary “stuff,” and how much of it is somehow related to God?

 

There are plenty, plenty, plenty of weeds in one’s life, and you can’t pull them out all at once. It takes baby steps, so that you don’t become the rocky soil from the parable. It’s always best to start with prayer, to begin building that bridge back to God and to ask for wisdom and guidance (“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7). Based on my own experience, I would also recommend reading good books, especially ones by Fulton Sheen. He helped me (and my husband!) in more ways than I know. His words helped to shine the light on those weeds in my life so that I could see what I couldn’t see before. In seeing the weeds, I saw the sin (that which takes me away from God), and I changed my life. Anyone can do this, too, but it has to come from within you. But the graces you’ll find of faith, true joy, and peace, are greater than any bodily enjoyment you’ve ever sought before. One after another, the pursuit of worldly pleasures always ends in disappointment, but the pursuit of the spirit never disappoints because eternal life with God is always the final fulfillment.

 

“As the appeal to the spiritual relaxes, the demands of the flesh increase. Living less for God, human nature begins to live only for self, for ‘no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or he will sustain the one, and despise the other.’ The regrettable aspect of it all is that, with this increased sin, there is decreased sense of sin. Souls sin more but think less about it. Sinners become so calloused that they have no yearning for redemption. Having lost their eyes, they no longer want to see; the only pleasure left to them in the end is to mock and sneer at those who do.” (Fulton Sheen, Victory over Vice)