I love the holiday song, “Celebrate Me Home.” (Kenny Loggins) It touches some tender place in my heart making me think of my first Christmas home from college. When I left for college my family moved from New York to Racine Wisconsin. So when I came “home” for that first break it was to somewhere I had never been, into a house, in a city I had never seen. And yet when I think about experiencing “coming home” it is the memory deep, in my bones, of being with my family that Christmas break.

Coming into a home I had never been in, hung a painting I had done as a child and the house smelled of my mother’s Italian meatballs and sauce, and my beloved younger six brothers and sisters surrounded me with their laughter and love. It is a sweet memory that felt magical after the loneliest few months I had ever known.

We are home to each other. The purpose of our lives is to create that home for each other in family, the one we are born into, and the ones we make with each other in the circle of our shared kindness and goodness.

God left the bliss of heaven to bless the earth by becoming one of us, becoming human. In the Incarnation we celebrate, Emanuel, God with us. Our good and almighty God must have wanted something like I found on that college Christmas break- home- a home with humanity, with all of our flaws and potential.

Jesus gave up so much to become a lasting home to us. I wish that Christ’s merciful love be where you find “home.” May we become a home to each other! I am so grateful for all the ways you have been that to me.