One of the joys, and also frustrations, of celebrating holidays when families expand and grow is the intricate dance of determining at whose house to gather and who should be invited. Grandma has always done this, but Aunt Mary wants to try that, and what about my side of the family, when do we fit them in? These are real problems, but good ones, because we have options. We can choose to expand our house and include others, or we can choose to limit our house to a select few.
As Isaiah reminds us, God doesn’t have that problem. God includes us all. The house of the Lord will be on the top of the mountain and all will stream toward it, from all directions, each on their own path. Who is in this human stream seeking the Lord? The rich, the poor, the strong, the weak, the sick and lame, the morally upright and the morally corrupt, the victims and the perpetrators; in short, all of us, all 7 billion of us now wandering around on this planet.
Are we close to changing swords into plowshares? Well, I recently read a report that we live in one of the least violent times of human history. How can that be, since terrorism (both foreign and domestic) is on the news daily? While I tend to think it is “fake news”, I think it was based on the number of people in conflicts as a percentage of the total population, so the growth in numbers actually has made all of us a little safer. We still train for war, and still spend a lot of our resources on it (especially the US). But on the bright side, we also have increased agricultural yields to un-dreamed of levels, we have eradicated many diseases, we have provided educational and cultural and societal opportunities around the world that could not have been anticipated a century ago.
So where is the Lord’s house? Is it on top of a mountain, or is it in each of us as we strive to move forward on the path that calls us to the Lord? Don’t we really build the house of the Lord one small act at a time by our reverence for each person, by our willingness to stop and help, by our civility, by our recognition that the Lord is in each of us, and therefore we all are in the house of the Lord in our every moment? Don’t we add to the house of the Lord when we remember not only the victims of heinous crimes and acts, such as the children harmed by pedophiles, but also when we pray for the pedophile, in whom the Lord also resides? And don’t we chip away at the house of the Lord when our anger, our frustration, our selfishness, our greed, causes us to think only of ourselves and not of the other 7 billion pilgrims on their own path to the house of the Lord?
I admit to “chipping away” at the house of the Lord often. I am reminded of a Sunday after Thanksgiving about 7 or 8 years ago, when I had to make a 3 ½ hour drive to Bakersfield in the late afternoon so I could start work early the next morning. I told Marilyn that I would like to leave home about 4pm or so in order to get to Bakersfield by 8pm. Being the loving wife she is, she made sure my dinner was ready close to 4pm so I could have my favorite Thanksgiving leftover—turkey tetrazzini—before leaving for another week. I was in a pretty good mood when I left; a full stomach, coming off of a great 3 days with my family, and relatively free of the chronic back pain I was experiencing that week. Everything on my drive was going as usual, until about 20 minutes from home. Traffic stopped on I-5 to a standstill. “Uh oh,” I thought, “there must be an accident ahead”. As I usually do, I said a Hail Mary for the “victims” of the accident and settled in for the wait. As the traffic started moving again, it was at between 15 and 30 MPH with brake lights flashing about every second somewhere ahead of me.
After 30 more minutes, I realized I was in the middle of the holiday traffic! It was bumper to bumper, in-your-face-drivers weaving in and out and causing more congestion than relieving it. I was getting really frustrated and yelling at the other drivers, as if they could hear me. The more I screamed my frustrations out, the more frustrated I became. I realized I was not going to change the situation by being frustrated, but what was I going to do? I asked the Holy Spirit to help me calm down as I started praying the rosary. As I got deeper in prayer, I became more aware of the fact that every one of the people I had been yelling at are also the Body of Christ and were simply trying to get home after the holidays. At that point, my frustration and anger just simply melted away and the drive became more bearable, thanks be to God! What should have been a 3 to 4-hour drive ended up being 7 hours, but what I learned that day has helped me to become less stressed when faced with frustration at others.
And so my prayer today is for the grace to better recognize the needs of my fellow pilgrims and act toward them in a way that adds a small piece to the house of the Lord as we journey together on our individual paths to the Lord.
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