When my wife and I first moved to Northern Virginia, I introduced
myself to a neighbor and learned that he was one of those rare native
Virginians. Smiling at my surprise, he informed me that I was a “come here” and
he was a “from here.”
“How long before you’ll call me a ‘from here’?” I asked. He shook
his head, grinned, and told me in a rich drawl, “You always gonna be a come
here.”
The Northern Virginia ‘burbs are home to so much turnover that
“come heres” are common, and we come to expect the risk that friendships may be
uprooted when someone gets transferred or pursues a new career opportunity. And
yet, two goodbyes in the past month have made me pine for the nostalgia of a
small town where moving is a rarity.
First, news came earlier this year that a good friend and fellow
parishioner would be transferred to a military base on the West Coast in June. With
poise and resolve, he and his wife and children packed up their belongings and
said their goodbyes. Whenever I asked him how he was doing, he’d smile and say,
“I’m packing it down.” We had them over for dinner before they left, and as our
kids played a raucous game of kickball, we “packed it down” over one last beer.
Days later came news of a different order — our pastor of 13
years and our parochial vicar of several years both received appointments to
new parishes. My wife and I called a family meeting to break the news to our
kids. No joke: our two girls immediately teared up; our boys grimaced and then
quickly drilled us with a series of matter-of-fact questions.
With a face “set like flint” (words he said he aspired to) but a
heart undoubtedly moved, our pastor began to pack, tie up loose ends, and
deliver a bracing final salvo of homilies. I watched as my son, trained by our
pastor at the altar, served one last Mass with his mentor. Our kids waited in
line after Mass for one more noogie from Father, and he affectionately tousled
their hair.
Any move stirs up a spectrum of emotion. And yet as I observed
how each man (and in my friend’s case, his family) received his call, I
glimpsed something more than a fog of shifting feelings: piercing through the
fog were blazing spotlights — of service to Christ’s church, and our country.
“Jesus unfortunately did not say ‘pick up your pillow and follow
me,’ ” our pastor said in his last homily, meditating on the eerily relevant
Gospel passage that Sunday: “And another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but
first let me say farewell to my family at home.’ To him Jesus said, ‘No one who
sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the
kingdom of God’ (Lk 9:61-62).”
The Gospel that parting Sunday suggested that following Jesus
requires us to “pack it down,” “set our face like flint,” “lay down our pillows,”
and pick up our cross. The Son of Man was always a “come here” with “nowhere to
rest His head.” Accepting my neighbor’s words is key to understanding our place
in this world: “You always gonna be a ‘come here.’ ” Our citizenship is in
heaven — only there can we say we are “from heres.”
The departure of our pastor, parochial vicar, and friends — two
men in service to their bride, the church; and a family of deep Catholic faith
and loyal service to our country — directed our gaze to an exquisite reality. The
quiet and unassuming manner in which they packed up and followed their Master
and journeyed to another village gave us a glimpse of Him. We saw icons of
Christian readiness to serve.
Their obedience gives the rest of us a chance to hear His
invitation anew: “Follow me.”
Johnson, a husband and father of five, is the bishop’s
Delegate for Evangelization and Media.