In You All Find Their Home

In baseball, it's the place where you're safe. According to Robert Frost it's "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." There's no place like it.

Home.

Largely due to the Solemnity of the Assumption, twice in the last two days the Liturgy of the Hours has directed our attention to Psalm 87, which contains the following memorable lines:

"Of you are told glorious things,

O city of Cod!"

It is He, the Lord most high,

who gives to each his place.

In his register of peoples he writes,

"These are her children,"

and while they dance they will sing:

"In you all find their home."

I love that last line especially. Throughout history, the symbolicly powerful image of God's city has been applied to various entities.

For Israel, it is the navel of the earth, holy Jerusalem. For the Western Church, it is, alternatively, the heavenly City above and its dim-by-comparison earthly counterpart, Rome. For those in the East, it speaks of the not-yet-forgotten glories of new Rome, Constantinople and its spiritual successor, Moscow.

Not least of all, the wisdom of the Church has applied this image to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It's a most apt image for Her.

Our Mother Mary IS a safe haven, a stronghold,

a place where people of diverse cultures and different background and deep needs all find a joyous welcome.

Anyone who trusts in Her Son Jesus has passed through the gates and finds his or her self enfolded in loving Arms of Mercy. We are Her children today as well as God's.

Welcome home.