"The Allman Brothers were onto something with their lyrics, 'Lord, I was born a ramblin' man." We are wanderers upon the earth. Why? This world is broken and, though it is filled with beauty, it is still a place of loss and impermanence. Yet we have a desire within us for a more lasting home, a homesickness for a place of joy where our wandering hearts can rest free from sorrow. Our hearts yearn for such a home because 'here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come' (Hebrews 13:14).
"In this life, we experience the loss of what we once knew and loved. Bereft, we become wanderers. In The Wanderer, an Anglo-Saxon poet considers, with agonizing sorrow and relentless nostalgia, 'this dark life' that is now deprived of the joys he had once known. His lord and king has been laid in the earth, his friends and companions slain, while he himself, over the sea 'suffers long / Stirring his hands in the frosty swell, / The way of exile.' He has become a weary wanderer in the midst of his life. He has come to know our life as the life of a wanderer. The only road or way that he knows is that of exile."
In a recent commentary, Brother Damian Day, O.P., reflected on our wandering hearts and feet and our striving to find our way to our homeland and on how that "path is Jesus Christ Himself" ("the Way" - which includes the Way of the Cross).
To access Br. Damien's complete reflection, please visit:
Dominicana: Ramblin' Men (7 APR 17)
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