Coming Home in November

I love the month of November. The macrocosm reflecting the microcosm, as Shakespeare's works so often displayed--nature and the travels of our hearts in perfect sync. Here in Lancaster County, PA, the pre-Thanksgiving fall is ever so poignant now in its golden waning, more sky visible through lacier branches, a lovely bittersweetness piercing the soul in the late afternoon slant of light. The very air we breathe in November carries a certain nostalgia, a word coming from the Greek words nostos, meaning "homecoming," and algos, meaning "pain" or "longing." The painful longing for home--no wonder Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined the term to describe the depression so keen in Swiss mercenaries yearning for their native land after foreign service.

 

November speaks the passage of time to our hearts. Its inevitable last scuttles of leaves under startlingly early sunsets sharpens our ache for HOME, so familiar yet so easily untended in other seasons. Our Mother the Church responds in wisdom by thinning the veil these weeks before Advent, inviting us to "big picture"--to "last things." Oh, how splendid you are, dear Bridegroom. How sacramentally you entice us to the Feasts of your Church this month.

 

 

All Souls' Day, immediately following--so "folded into" by its preceding feast, as though the saints themselves are pleading with us to remember and intercede for the Church Suffering. These are our beloveds, known and unknown, and the saints', too, whose nostalgia for HOME is most acute, sensing simultaneously as they do the perfect Love that fills heaven and the pain of their internal blockages to that Love. They see, in hope yet in agony, damage inflicted, burdens caused, ruptures unheeded. The burdens of those who burdened them become clear, allowing forgiveness to flow as the love of Jesus and His Mother anoints and heals. Nothing is hidden: their actions, their abuses, their absences, their neglect. How they yearn for our acknowledging of their "trespass against us" and all its painful effects, for our intuiting their grave remorse, for our mercy and forgiveness. They ache for us, knowing that we cannot be free until we say, with Jesus, "Unbind him (or her), and let him (or her) go."  And when we do, not only does a path open for them, one opens for us and for the generations below us, so that the "sin" does not "continue to the third and fourth generation." ((Ex.34:7). Jesus, help us be "repairers of the breach." (Is: 58:12).  Help us shorten the purgatory of all our beloveds, those who come before us, those who come afterwards, those we know, those we will know only in eternity.  In shortening theirs, we shorten our own.

 

Thank you, dear Bridegroom, that sacramental November woos us. Our nostalgic hearts, so hardwired for HOME here on earth in the "Church Militant," crave all that "home" means, including the embrace of family. Your feast of Christ the King, crowning this month, unites us so palpably with our brothers and sisters in heaven and on their way to heaven: you are our Lord, our King, our tender Spouse. Someday we holy siblings will know each other and be known as we can only taste in our earthly families.  Your gentle mercies, fully received and fully shared, will make all relating safe. In the meantime, we strain toward that oneness, the Saints Triumphant rooting for Purgatorial and Militant Souls, the Purgatorials and Militants praying for one another. We collaborate, as families do!  As prayers from "above" and "below" lighten the loads of the Church Suffering, these souls, closer and closer to heaven, see how our self-interest and pride, our control and complaining, our self-reliance and subtle resistance to the salve you desire to pour into us, keep us from "life, and life to the full"---and they return our prayers unceasingly. Thank you, dear siblings in Purgatory! Thank you, dear siblings in Heaven! Your whole Body, dear Jesus, gives a resounding "YES" to cooperating with your complete work of love on the cross. You'll brook no unfinished business, no "spot or wrinkle or anything of the sort." (Eph. 5: 27), in your Bride.

 

Thank you, dearest Bridegroom, that you could not wait for your Spouse. "You satisfy the hungry heart," yours and ours, with its deepest longings, in the Eucharist. There November nostalgia gives way to HOME. There in your own heart you gather your whole Communion of Saints. There we hear a cheer go up, led by you from the cross, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us." (Rom. 8:18). There we imbibe that glory--YOU! There we receive your whole Body, encountering all our beloveds here and gone before us. We see them as you see them. We intuit their gratitude for your "loud cries to the Father on their behalf" (Heb.5:7) joined to ours, even as we realize that their intercession is completing us. And there in Holy Communion we taste knowing and being known, loving and being loved, beyond our wildest dreams. There we taste heaven.

 

Heaven--where there will be no more separations, no more goodbyes... Our dear Father Delacy directed us retreatants, leaving a recent Restore weekend which truly was a moment of HOME, to bypass the sadness of goodbyes with one, simple phrase, "See you in the Eucharist!"  So, my dear sisters in Christ (and brothers who may be reading this), "see you in the Eucharist!" See you in Jesus with all our beloveds and saints and angels.  On this lovely November day, all umber and russet, I'm catching their song--it's the final verse of "For All the Saints." Would you sing with me? The pedals of the grand organ have swelled, the tempo has slowed to "majestic," and all the stops are out:

 

     From  earth's wide bounds,

     from ocean's farthest coast,

     Through gates of pearl

     streams in the countless host,

     Singing to Father,

     Son, and Holy Ghost,

     Alleluia... ALLELUIA!!

 

Bonnie West, Copyright 2024