Far from...

Most of the saints I've come heard of ended up far from where they actually started.  Not just by birth but their very ministry or adult life itself took them places. 

In our contemporary times, this does not seem much of an achievement.  Given that we travel all the time and are hardly in one place all our life, it is easy to think that every one moves all around. Not always.  In bygone days when travel was necessitated only by urgency or desperation, and means of travel were hardly a luxury, leave alone the cost and danger involved.  Most people, never moved away from their place of birth.  There wasn't anywhere they really needed to go to.

Today people move from place to place either for study or work or family needs.  As a religious have been through so many places.  And each place being a home.  Not just as tourists visiting some new place.  People ask me if it is difficult to pick up one's bags and leave for good, only to repeat the process every couple of years.  Not really.  I think it is the whole attitude of 'being at home' that actually matters.  It is not the place as such but if every place one goes to becomes a home (or is made a home) then moving around does not uproot one.  In that sense, I certainly am far from where I started, but certainly not lost or away. Am at home!