The Church is our home. We are so blessed to be able to come back home to our parish church after these two years of pandemic! In his March letter to the faithful in our diocese withdrawing the general dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass, Bishop Flores stated: “As conditions have improved, more and more people have returned to the practice of participating in the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. This is a sign of great hope, and of our awareness as Catholics that to be the charitable people the Lord calls us to be, we must, whenever possible, seek the Sacrament of Charity, Christ himself in the Eucharist.”

To again be able to receive our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist is a blessing to be cherished and not taken lightly. It is coming back home!

Our grandson Elian recently received his First Holy Communion and I was reminded of my own preparation for and reception of the Holy Eucharist. Having been raised in a Catholic/ Methodist home, my grandmother Clara Reyna made sure I prepared for this sacrament at our parish, and receiving Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time was one of the best days of my life. I remember, as if yesterday, telling my mother (as she was doing laundry in our old wringer washer) that I was going to “make” my First Communion and I was going to be Catholic. Throughout the years that followed, I often had to find my own way to church with my grandparents or my best friend’s family, my padrinos. The Lord placed in my heart at that early age that besides my wonderful domestic church, the Church was also my home and my loving family. “As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young, My home is by your altars, Lord of hosts, my king and my God” (Ps 84:4)!

Followers of Jesus Christ can perhaps at times find themselves away from or disconnected to the Church. The theorist of the Stages of Faith Development, James Fowler notes that young adults often leave the Church or shop around other churches in a quest to make their faith and their commitment to the Church their own. This is why it is not surprising to me when I meet young adults preparing for marriage be reunited to the faith and commitment of their childhood. Often they explore how their faith, their prayer life, and their church attendance is being rekindled as they, together with their fiancé, make their spiritual plan during their marriage preparation process. “Like a bird far from the nest so is anyone far from home”(Ps 27:8). The Church is joy filled to welcome and receive them as a mother bird retrieves the young back to the nest.

Many life situations can lead people to distance themselves from the Church, including illness, disillusionment, hurt from church personnel, fear of virus infections during this pandemic, and/or misunderstandings. Pope Francis through his constant reminder to all of us to reach out to others, especially in the peripheries, challenges each of us to invite people to keep coming back home. Through this year’s Synodal listening processes, we have also been given opportunities to keep coming back home. Pope Francis states: “I would like that all of us, after these days of grace, might have the courage – the courage – to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord: to build the Church on the Blood of the Lord, which is shed on the Cross, and to profess the one glory, Christ Crucified. In this way, the Church will go forward.”

We may have been limited to attending church in person throughout these two years but we have never been limited to building up our domestic church/our family. Perhaps this time of having to participate in the liturgy virtually and then gradually returning to our parish churches has reminded us of the importance of praying as a family, of reading a few verses from the Gospels (as Bishop Flores often invites us to) and of being the primary catechists of our children and youth. “And all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Messiah, Jesus”(Acts 5:42).