 I like to tell my wife that home is wherever she is, wherever one of my loved ones is. Home is wherever I find God among us, and I find God present in the love we share. Wherever that higher calling of love is, there is our home. As we learn to trust that God's loving hand can indeed guide us during this earthly life, we also learn to recognize the Holy Spirit marking us as His people, helping us to love as we have been created to do. Nowhere is this more explicit for us than at the celebration of the Eucharist. There in God’s temple, through the power of the Holy Spirit and in the guise of the humble Host, Christ becomes present for us, and we dwell with Jesus for a little while, experiencing the very real expression of God's kingdom on earth. Our humble King gives himself to us and for us, completely and without cost. His love is given to us without limits, and where God’s love dwells, there is our home.
We are called to give ourselves the same way Christ does, to become Eucharist for others, to feed the ones hungry the same way we are fed, and to do that joyfully, willingly, becoming love. And as we become love, we also become home to our brethren through Christ’s unifying love. We know this because:
Saint Paul eloquently states in this letter that we must love. We may not yet know how our love helps change the world, but it does change it indeed. As we become God’s love on this earth, let us remember that the expression of love in practice is charity and that there are two sides to charity, giving and receiving. Our Lord is present in both, and so must we be.
What we do for the ones in need, with love, we do for Him! Our Lord knows us, so he sometimes grants us feelings of accomplishment for our loving actions, but let us not do this just for the good feelings and vibes, but instead, grow more grateful and even more in love with Christ for His gift of love to us. To care for the sick, visit the lonely, comfort the mourning, accompany the weeping, and protect the weak. All of these are to be Christ to someone, but we are also Christ to someone when we are open to our need for love and charity, for our Lord said:
When we offer our needs, our poverty, and our lack, we open ourselves to receive love and charity from our brethren. We allow them to see and serve Christ in us, and we are then blessed. And who blesses but God? We are God’s expression of love if we take Him at His word and raise our hands in blessing as Christ did, when we give and when we receive. We are the salt of the earth.
During a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I visited my parents in my hometown of Peñuelas. The next day after my arrival, my parents woke up early in the morning and said to me “Let’s go love and be charitable” and we proceeded to go visit a few who were sick, old, and infirm, and a few who were lonely and isolated. I saw, through the eyes of our friends, that Christ was indeed there. God’s love was present in us, charity was given and received in every conversation, and love was exchanged. I had a hard time leaving every place because I felt His presence among us, and I do not believe I have ever felt more at home while on the road. May we all get to experience the gift of living charity, and the feeling of God’s love flowing through our very selves. May we all get to truly say that “Where God’s love dwells, there is our home.” Let us pray: Lord, help us to be your heart alive in this world. Let us be your eyes and ears, attuned to the needs of your loved ones, and the hands and feet that do your will in the world. Help us to love as you love, and to help make you present in the hearts of your people. Let us be always home in you. Amen.
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 “Cheo Crucifix and Grandmother Rafaela Qurindongo's Rosary” - Picture Courtesy of Rick Hernandez Whenever I go to visit my hometown in Puerto Rico, I love spending time with my parents and sharing a bit in their day-to-day lives, whether it is just hanging out at home, visiting the sick and the lonely, or checking in with family and loved ones. My parents have been Catholic missionaries most of their adult lives, following in the footsteps of my maternal grandparents, who themselves were Catholic missionaries spreading the good news of Christ’s love to communities that had been growing ever more separated from the faith of our ancestors. We do not tend to think of where our faith comes from, but for me, it is as easy as to look at the lives of those who preceded us. The lives of my ancestors, including my parents’ lives, show me what faith in action looks like and what active thanksgiving can do for the world. Their lives and others like them show a path we can use to connect back to God the Father. When I come back from those cherished trips to visit my parents, I bring back whatever latest artifact I have collected from the lives of my ancestors, an old rosary, a well-used old book, some guidance notes from a talk, or an old and worn crucifix, or maybe a statue or a picture, or some recording from a mission long ago, and I regale my wife with the new stories that I have learned. Some of these are stories of great sacrifice, love, faith, and conversion, of much risked and much gained. A few are stories of courageous people staring evil in the face and standing their ground. Some stories are of great hurt and even greater mercy and forgiveness. Yet other stories are of great sadness over opportunities lost, of someone not able to accept God’s call. What all the stories depict is the openness of God’s people to put effort into their call, for that is all that we can guarantee when doing God’s work... I really get into the stories when I tell them, almost as if I can see us present there, and my dear wife laughs and cries with me. When I was done with the retelling of the stories from this last visit, she looked at my face, grabbed my hands, and said: "Rick, this is your patrimony, it is OUR patrimony", and I could feel my face lighting up.
A heritage! And not just my heritage, but our heritage. And not just my inheritance but our inheritance, passed down through the generations by the life of our Mother Church, by the call to serve Him who loves us and His loved ones. This feels BIG and complicated, and probably hard to understand for the many, but for the faithful, we need only respond to the call with openness and a willingness to work within the call. From our heritage, the understanding will come. When I think back to my grandparents’ lives, I have no grand understanding of how they came to be that way, other than knowing they understood clearly their call to live a life of love, faith, and hope. They received the call, accepted it, and acted upon it. My grandfather understood that we are, through Christ, the inheritors of the Father. Our call to live the life God wants us to is “inherited,” it is built into our very beings. In simpler words, who we are is meant to match who we were created to be… We accomplish this “becoming who we were meant to be” by living the love and mercy we receive, and by using the gifts we are granted on this earth to love one another and glorify God with our thoughts and actions, with all our might and all our strength. These gifts that we receive, wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and awe, are there for us to share with our brethren, with those who need us, and with those who walk with us. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are the tools in our toolbox, and these are part of our inheritance. Through baptism, we receive our status as inheritors of God the Father as His children. Our status as inheritors, as well as our call to share in the Eucharistic Communion along with our access to His gifts for us, are all our patrimony. Therefore, it is clear, that we are inheritors of our predecessors, physically, genetically, culturally, and spiritually. Notice that our inheritance is not just spiritual, there is also the physical, day-to-day component of our inheritance. As children of the Mother Church, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, we also have access to her patrimony.
Our patrimony is not of things that pass or end, but of things that persist, build us up, and are life-giving, generation after generation, until the end of the age. Our patrimony is our beautiful churches, cathedrals, and basilicas. It is our small, humble chapels. Our patrimony is our rosary beads as well-used reminders of our prayer offerings. It is our statues and images, recordings, and writings. It is our oral history, passed down through those who came before us and are now gone to share in Christ’s light. Our patrimony is our right to our Faith, Hope, and Love, it is alive in the trust, charity, and hopefulness that we espouse every day. During my last visit to the island, I stopped to spend time with my youngest brother, Father Victor Manuel Hernandez, at his parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Juana Diaz. While there, I stopped to look at his desk, and there among many other things was this beautiful “Cheo Crucifix”. A Cheo Crucifix is given to every person who finishes missionary formation and is inducted into the Lay Missionary Congregation of Saint John the Evangelist (better known as the “Hermanos Cheos”). This is the missionary congregation to which my grandfather, Marcelino, my grandmother, Gina, my father, Manuel, and my mother, Vicky, have belonged to for decades. The Cheos have been a central part of my family’s lives since long before I was born, and it brought me great amazement to see that crucifix on his desk, for I know my dear brother is not a “Cheo”. He smiled when I brought that up and told me to pick it up to take a good look. The crucifix was made in Germany of wood and metal. It felt solidly built and had the inscribed metal plates quite faded from use, yet there, right in the middle where I expected it, was the number “4”. This was my grandfather Marcelino’s crucifix, one that had gone to every town on the island, a witness to a life of toil in the service of the greater, the holier, and the sacred. I stooped a bit because the weight of the history in my hands became apparent, and my heart swelled, remembering that towering and courageous man going out into the world trying to fulfill his mission. This IS patrimony, a reminder to us that we are all part of something greater, holier, and sacred. The weight of that crucifix on my hands reminded me that our mission to let God’s love for us be known to the whole world has been passed down to us, and we must strive to pass it down to others... This I pray for all of us, that our lives may act as a witness to God’s love for us. May we accept our call to mission, love, mercy, compassion, companionship, friendship, and active witness. May we recognize our patrimony and receive our inheritance, and may we make good use of it while on this earth. Let us pray: Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, may your Kingdom come, and may your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven! Help us this day to do your will. Help us to accept your call to serve. May we grow to be as You created us to be and pass our knowledge of You to all generations until the end of the age. Amen.
 During the Season of Advent, I find time to look inwards, into the preparedness of my heart, the disposition of my soul, and the willingness of my mind to conform to God’s will for me and mine. It is often that I find myself falling short of the goal, for I can be hardheaded in my ways, lacking in docility and humility. I then ask myself why that is? Why is it that we tend to be persistent in our obstinacy?
To be hard-headed and obstinate is nothing new. During the Exodus, God asked Moses to guide the Israelites out of Egypt, so that they may be free. God was providing His people with freedom from enslavement after many years under the control of Egypt, yet there were many who stayed. Some Jewish Apocrypha writings state that a large group of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt refused to leave. This group refused freedom. Why? Because they refused to “change”. Life in Egypt as slaves was all they had ever known, and they had to balance that against their fear of the “different”. The ones who stayed probably had not known God as some of their ancestors had, so why would they trust? They trusted more the “known” in front of them than the call to be God's chosen people. We can easily see that faith was sparse among the many, and hope without faith can latch on to false things, it can misdirect our gaze to miss what is true and real. They could not recognize their call as God’s people, and for that many died still captive. Change is hard, for it requires trust, docility, humility, acceptance… Most of us dislike change, and that is specifically because we lack the trust to challenge what it is we understand to be.
But even when we do take that leap of faith and follow our Lord, do we let go of our pride, of our desire for control? Do we stop longing for that which we knew? What happens the first moment change challenges us, and we waver in our faith, docility, humility, and acceptance?
There is always the temptation to go back to where we were. To go back to the known as opposed to trust in the direction God sets up for us. “Better the devil you know...” is a saying for a reason, because it is in our nature to waver and go back to the known, yet we must fight this impulse. God is calling us to change. He is calling us to trust Him, to conform to His will for us. He is calling us to prepare, in humility, and to accept what He is planning for us. The Hebrews stayed for 40 whole years in the desert. Mainly because they refused to accept God’s will for them. Yet, eventually, putting their trust in God’s plan, they were led to the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey.
There will be times when life will feel heavy and overwhelming as we cross our own deserts. There will be occasions when we will feel we do not have what it takes to do what is asked of us. It is specifically in these instances that we need to grow ever closer to our Lord, conforming to His will for us more perfectly, for we know that what is nurtured is what grows.
Let us grow in faith and trust, that our hope be fulfilled in the acceptance of our daily mission of love and mercy in the world. Let us accept the freedom God is inviting us to live. May we protect the seed of our faith, and water it with the love of Christ Eucharistic, that we may grow ever faithful.
Let us pray: Lord, we do not always know what is your plan for us and ours, but help us to grow to perfectly trust in your will for us. May we be able with your mighty help to leave behind our old captive selves and embrace the freedom of your call to us. Amen.
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AuthorsWe are Ivonne J. Hernandez, Rick Hernandez and Laura Worhacz, Lay Associates of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and brothers and sisters in Christ. 
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