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Today we bring you a working translation of another meditation by Father Radcliffe OP, which was delivered at the beginning of the synod on synodality. A meditation on a home that is not only ..., but also ...

We come to the synod with hopes that contradict each other. Yet this need not be an insurmountable obstacle. What unites us is the eucharistic hope, a hope that embraces—yet also transcends—everything we desire.

Another source of tension is our understanding of the Church as home, as we do not always agree on this. Every living creature needs a home to thrive. Fish need water and birds need nests. Without a home, one cannot live. However, different cultures have different ideas of what such a home should look like. "Asia offered the image of a person who removes their sandals at the doorstep as a sign of humility, with which we prepare to meet God and our neighbors. Oceania provides the image of a boat. And Africa shows the Church as the family of God, capable of offering each of its many different members a sense of belonging and warm acceptance." (Instrumentum laboris, B 1.2). All these images show that we need to have our "homes" where we are accepted and encouraged at the same time. At home, we may be who we are, and we are also encouraged to give more of ourselves. Home is where we are known, loved, and protected, but at the same time encouraged to embark on the adventure of faith.

The world suffers from a homelessness crisis. If we want to address it, we must first renew the Church as our common home. We are ravaging our small planetary home. More than 350 million refugees have been displaced by war and violence. Thousands of them, in search of home, drown at sea. None of us can feel completely at home until this changes. Even in wealthy countries, millions of people sleep on the streets. Young people often cannot afford housing. And everywhere, a terrible spiritual homelessness spreads. Rampant individualism, family breakdowns, and growing inequalities flood us like a tsunami of loneliness. Suicides are increasing because without home, neither physical nor spiritual, one cannot live. To love means to come home to someone.

What can the scene of the Transfiguration teach us about our home? What can we learn in the Church and in our ravaged world? Jesus takes his closest circle of friends aside to enjoy intimate moments together. These three will also be with him in Gethsemane. A close circle of those with whom Jesus feels most at home. On the mountain, he allows them to see his glory, and Peter longs to stop that moment: "Master, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." (Luke 9:33). He came and wants this intimate moment not to end immediately.

In that, he hears the voice of the Father. "Listen to him!" They must descend from the mountain and go to Jerusalem. They do not know what awaits them. They will be scattered and sent to all corners of the earth to bear witness to our most authentic home, the Kingdom of God. Home in the event of the Transfiguration can be understood in two ways: as an intimate closeness, where we are at home with Jesus on the mountain, and as a call to the eternal, definitive home, to the Kingdom of God, which will belong to everyone.

Different understandings of the Church as home still divide us today. For some, the home of the Church is defined by traditional customs and forms of piety, structure, and language, the heritage of ancestors. The Church is the place where we grew up and which we love, and that gives us a clear Christian identity. For others, today’s Church does not seem to be a safe home. It is experienced as an exclusive community that marginalizes many people: women, the divorced, and those who have remarried. For some, the Church is too Western, too Eurocentric. The Instrumentum laboris also mentions people living in homosexual or polygamous unions. All of them long for a renewed Church where they would feel fully at home, recognized, accepted, and safe.

The idea that everyone is welcomed and accepted regardless of who they are may be felt by some as a destruction of the identity of the Church. As is echoed in an English song from the 19th century: "if everybody is somebody then nobody is anybody" (1), which means "if everyone is someone, then no one is anyone." These people believe that identity requires boundaries. But for others, the inner essence of Christian identity is to be open. Pope Francis says: "The Church is called to be a house of the Father, with doors always wide open… where there is a place for everyone, with all his problems. And to reach out to those who feel the need to embark on a journey of faith again." (2).

This tension has always been present at the roots of our faith. And that has been the case since the days when Abraham left Ur. The Old Testament maintains a constant tension between two elements: On one hand, there is the idea of election, the idea of the chosen people of God, the identity we cherish with reverence. But on the other hand, the idea of universality, the idea of openness to all nations, an identity that is still waiting to be revealed, is also represented.

Christian identity is simultaneously known and unknown. It is something that is firmly established yet something to be sought. As St. John says: "Beloved, we are now God's children. But what we will be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is." (1 John 3:2). We know who we are, but we do not yet know who we will be.

For some of us, Christian identity is primarily given; the Church is as we know and love it. For others, Christian identity is somehow provisional, lying on the horizon of our journey to the Kingdom, where all the walls of our divisions will fall. Both are necessary! If we emphasize only that our identity is firmly established, that this is the true Catholic, we risk becoming a sect. If we only emphasize the adventurous search for yet undiscovered identity, we risk becoming a vague Jesus movement. But the Church is a sign and sacrament of the unity of all humanity in Christ (LG 1) by encompassing both. We dwell on the mountain and already taste the glory. And at the same time, we walk towards Jerusalem—the first synod of the Church.

How should we experience this essential tension? All theology springs from the tension that stretches the bow to shoot the arrow. The same tension is hidden at the heart of the Gospel of John. God makes his home in us: "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." (John 14:23). But Jesus also promises us that our home will be in God: "In my Father's house are many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" (John 14:2).

When we think of the Church as home, some primarily think of God coming home to us, and others mainly think of themselves heading home to God. Both groups are right. Let us include in our sympathies those who think differently. We cherish the intimate solitude on the mountain, but we also descend and head towards Jerusalem, like wanderers without a place to lay their heads. "Listen to him!"

First, God dwells with us. The Word became flesh in a Palestinian Jew of the first century, raised in the customs and traditions of his people. The Word becomes flesh in every culture: when we look at the scene of the Annunciation in Italian visual arts, we see a lovely marble structure, with windows opening to an olive grove and gardens full of roses and lilies. Dutch and Flemish masters depict Mary by a warm fire, nicely wrapped up so she doesn’t get cold. Whatever your home may be, God comes to dwell in it. For thirty silent years, God dwelled in Nazareth, in an insignificant hole. Nathanael disdainfully exclaimed: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46). Philip simply replies, "Come and see."

All our homes are Nazareth, where God dwells. Saint Charles de Foucauld /1858–1916/ said: "Let Nazareth be your model, in all its simplicity and breadth… You can live the life of Nazareth anywhere. Live it where it benefits your neighbors the most." (3) No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, God comes to remain with us: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." (Rev 3:20).

In our hearts, we keep the places where we have met Emmanuel, "God with us." We love liturgical rites in which we have perceived divine beauty, the churches of our childhood, the popular devotions. I personally love the vast Benedictine abbey where I attended school and where I first felt that the gates of heaven were open. Each of us has our Mount Tabor, where we glimpsed God's glory. We need this tremendously! When the rites change, when temples are dismantled, people experience immense pain, as if their home in the Church is being torn away. Like Peter, we want to stay.

Every local church, every church is a home of God. The Virgin Mary appeared in Walsingham, England—a great medieval shrine, in Lourdes, in Mexican Guadalupe, in Polish Czestochowa, in La Vang in Vietnam, and in Donglu in China. These places do not compete with each other in any way. Here in England, we say we have two messages: "The good one - God loves you. And the bad one - he loves everyone else just as much." Saint Augustine said: "God loves each of us as if we were the only one in the world." (4) In Algiers, at the Basilica of Our Lady, Mother of Africa, there is an inscription: "Priez pour nous et pour les Musulmans," "pray for us and for the Muslims."

It is often precisely priests who find it difficult to embrace the synodal path. We as clergy tend towards sacred places and the liturgy we celebrate there. Priests need a strong sense of identity, esprit de corps, belonging to a community. But who would we be in a Church freed from clericalism? How can the clergy adopt an identity that is not clerical? This is a great challenge for the renewed Church! Let us try to accept without fear a newly understood brotherly dimension of the ministerial priesthood. Perhaps we will discover that this "loss" of identity is actually an integral part of our priestly identity. It is a calling to be raised above all identities, for "what we will be has not yet been revealed." (1 John 3:2).

Today, God dwells in places that the world despises. Dominican Frei Betto /*1944/ tells how God came to share home in a Brazilian prison where his brother friars were incarcerated for resisting the dictatorial regime (1964-1985): "On Christmas, the feast of the Lord's coming home to this world, joy prevailed everywhere. Christmas night in prison… Now the whole prison is singing, as if our happy and free song itself is to be heard by the whole world. From the women’s cells, singing resounds and we clap… Everyone here knows it is Christmas, that someone is coming into the world again. And our songs bear witness that we too have been reborn to fight for a world without tears, hatred, and oppression. It is indeed a sight to see young faces pressed against the bars, wanting to sing their love. This cannot be forgotten. It is not a spectacle for our judges, state prosecutors, or police who arrested us. For them, the beauty of this night would be unbearable."

We would like—like Peter—to set up camp each at our own "Tabor," where we sense the Lord's beauty. That is good! But "Listen to him!" We revel in those moments, but then it is necessary to descend and go to Jerusalem. In a sense, we must become homeless: "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." (Luke 9:58). The disciples went to Jerusalem, to the Holy City, where God's name dwells. But Jesus dies outside the walls, for all who live outside the walls. Similarly—outside the camp—God revealed himself to his people in the desert. James Alison /*1959/ wrote: "God is among us as one who has been expelled." (5) Jesus suffered outside the city gates to sanctify us by his blood. Let us therefore go out to him outside the camp and bear the insults he endured (cf. Heb 2:12).

Archbishop Carlos Azpiroz da Costa /*1956/ was for years the head of the preaching brothers. At that time, he wrote to his Dominican family: "We meet God outside the camp, among all those 'others' who have been expelled outside. To wander means to go out beyond institutions, to step out of culturally conditioned ways of perceiving and opinions because an encounter with God, who cannot be controlled or confined, takes place precisely 'outside the camp.' ‘Outside the camp’ we meet the Other, who is different, and where we discover who we are and what we have to do." (6) Only when we go out do we arrive at home, where "there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female; for all are one in Christ Jesus." (cf. Gal 3:28).

In the 1980s, when the Church was searching for its stance on the AIDS crisis, I visited a hospital in London. The chief physician mentioned they had a young man who was requesting a priest named Timothy. By God's providence, I managed to give him the last rites shortly before his death. He expressed the wish that his funeral take place in Westminster Cathedral, right in the heart of English Catholicism. He was surrounded by ordinary people who came to Mass on weekdays and also by HIV-positive individuals, nurses, doctors, and friends. The one who had always been on the periphery—because of his illness, because of his sexual orientation, and now mainly because he was dead—found himself at the center of attention. Surrounded by people for whom the Church is home, as well as people who would normally never step into a church.

Our lives are nourished by traditions and devotions that are dear to us. It troubles us when we lose them. But we must take into account all those who still do not feel at home in the Church: women who feel undervalued in the patriarchal system of old white men like me. People for whom the Church is too Western, too Latin, too colonial. We must move toward a Church where they will feel at the center, not at the margins.

When Thomas Merton /1915–1968/ converted to Catholic faith, he discovered that "God, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, found me." The renewal of the Church is similar to kneading bread. One gathers the edges of the dough to the center and stretches it back until the air gets everywhere. Bread is kneaded through the constant turning of what is in the center and what is on the edge... The Bread of God, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, bread that finds us.

A final brief word: as we prepared for the synod, the question repeatedly arose: "How can we feel at home in a Church connected with such terrible scandals of sexual abuse?" For many, it was the last straw. They packed up and left. I posed this question at a meeting of directors of Catholic schools in Australia, where the Church had been horrifically disfigured by sexual scandals. How have they remained? How is it that they are still at home?

One of them cited Carlo Carretto /1910–1988/, a member of the Foucauldian congregation of Little Brothers of Jesus. Carretto captures the ambivalence of the Church, which is still not my home, which both reveals and conceals God.

"I have so much to reproach you, O Church, and yet I love you so much! You have caused me more suffering than anyone else, and yet I owe you more than to anyone. I would so much like to see you destroyed at times, yet I desperately need you to be. How many times have you scandalized me, yet you yourself help me understand your holiness... I can't count how many times I wanted to slam the doors of my soul, to bang them shut before you—and still, every night, I so much ask to die in the safety of your arms! No, I cannot be without you, for I am one with you, even though I am not entirely you. And also—where would I go? Build another church? After all, I cannot build a church without those same mistakes ... because those mistakes are mine."

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age!" If the Lord remains, how could we leave? God has made his home in us, with all our scandalous limitations. He has made it forever. God remains in the Church, even with all its corruption and abuse. Therefore, we must remain as well. God remains with us to lead us to the broad, airy spaces of his Kingdom. We need the Church, our earthly home, with all its weaknesses, but we also need to be "oxygenated" by the Holy Spirit, to take a breath of the air of our future home, a home without borders.

(1) W. S. Gilbert, The Gondoliers, 1889
(2) Evangelii Gaudium, 47.
(3) Cathy Wright LSJ, St. Charles de Foucauld: His Life and Spirituality, p. 111
(4) Confessions, book 3
(5) Knowing Jesus, p. 71
(6) Letter to the Order on Itinerancy