Fourth Sunday of Lent

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What do we visualize with Laetare Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Lent, when we are called to celebrate, or to rejoice?

Joy is often, for, associated with family celebrations or dinner.

Every Sunday we would have a family dinner after Mass and when I write family, I mean extended family that included people from church and the neighborhood who were going through bad times.

But our family Sunday dinners were legendary and I still cannot figure out how my grandparents fit such a large number in their far from palatial Manhattan apartment.

But they did.

There are many such dinners that I remember and even am homesick for. One Sunday dinner in Lent, stands out when my very rich and grand aunt came to stay or condescended to stay.

One Sunday dinner member, was a dear family friend, Uncle Joe, who like many brilliant people suffered from addiction problems.

My grandparents always treated him as Jesus Christ, lovingly, without harshness and he responded with an observation that dinner at my grandparents was a cure for whatever ailed you, especially homesickness.

In fact Uncle Joe called their home, the “Cure for Homesickness Restaurant.”

The Sunday that my aunt came for dinner was one where Uncle Joe was very late.

Halfway thru dinner, the doorbell rang, and my aunt dashed to the door being a control freak. Sadly, she was religious but not in the best sense of the word.

She opened the door to find Uncle Joe standing there.

She rather haughtily asked him, what he wanted?

Uncle Joe responded that he was expected for dinner.

My aunt left him waiting on the doorstep to go to the pantry to find a roll.

My grandmother never threw food away and these rolls were hard as diamonds.

Aunt Elizabeth handed Uncle Joe the roll, and said,

“I do not love you , but I love Jesus Christ” and handed Uncle Joe the roll, as if it were the Hope Diamond.

He looked at the roll, scratched his head and said,

“Well, for the love of Jesus Christ would you please put some butter on the bread?”

Are your taste buds beginning to awaken? Are your memories of previous celebrations stirring?

Food and memories go together, don’t they? And food is more than just food? The food we are homesick for has to do with more than taste, it has to do with place and time and the experience of joy or comfort or love. It tastes like home.

Think of when we are ill and our mother makes a special kind of soup or birthdays when our families prepare our favorite foods just for us.

What kind of food are you homesick for?

It has occurred to me that the church, especially the Rite of Communion, is a kind of cure for a homesickness restaurant.

It is a place where we find we’re most homesick for. It is the place homesick people come to. Sometimes we do not even know we’re homesick till we get here and suddenly our appetite returns.

Funny, when we are homesick, really homesick, we do not even feel like eating till we get home. And when our legs are finally under the familiar table, we feel like we could eat forever.

What is on the menu here at this homesick restaurant?

God’s word is what you will find and if you search the menu long enough you will find what we really need:

Sturdy guidance, tender mercy, light in the darkness care for our soul and song in the night.

Also on the menu and what I believe are all homesick for is communion and community with one another.

Aren’t we all homesick for that experience – sitting with people we love and who love us, hearts filled with gladness and hearts that want to give and give and give.

Sunday dinners are like the Kingdom of Heaven, in that both are great feasts a love feast where no one is a stranger.

We all have secrets – hurtful things. Long ago things. We are all scared and lonesome, but most of the time we keep it hidden. It is like every one of us has lost their way and to the point we don’t even know which way is home, and we are ashamed to ask.

You know what would happen if we would own up that we are lost and ask?

What would happen is that we would find out home is each other. We would find home is Jesus loves us lost or found or any which way.

We meet Christ here, at this homesick restaurant, and he is the one I hope we all hunger for most of all.

There is forgiveness here and a welcome home. There’s a savior around this table who understands everything and who has felt every human push and pull everyone desolation, and every heart on fire.

And this savior is not sitting arms crossed, just waiting to see if we are smart enough, hungry enough to come.

Christ is the one we meet at the homesick restaurant.

He takes an apron, and waits on every table. Yours too.

“What would you like?” Christ asks.

We stammer and ask for a little time. We are not always sure what we want, what we are homesick for. But Christ is patient.

Trying to impress Christ, we ask for escargot and truffles.

“I do not think that is what you’re looking for,” he gently says, but have you tried our roast beef and mashed potatoes, with some butter?”

“That sounds delicious” we say with sudden recognition.

We are nervous about the price and look over the right-hand column – oh,

No prices. We know that means trouble.

Christ sees our anxiety, and says,

“Don’t worry. It is on the house.

May we all find joy and a home.

Fr. Richard E. Long

Campus Minister and

Professor of Business

Brooklyn College