{"id":27744,"date":"2026-10-14T07:11:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T11:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27744"},"modified":"2026-10-14T07:49:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T11:49:41","slug":"27744","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27744","title":{"rendered":"The Odyssey: A Story of Homegoing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Summons | Catholic Hymn | John L. Bell | KELVINGROVE | Choir with Lyrics | Sunday 7pm Choir\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6FasN8fukrs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Wednesday, October 14, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard reflects on Homer\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Odyssey<em>&nbsp;as an archetypal story that reveals the necessary journey from and return to home: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our true self in God<\/strong>. <strong>The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God,<\/strong> and this is the full homecoming. Until then, we are homesick, although today most would probably just call it loneliness, isolation, longing, sadness, restlessness, or even a kind of depression. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The common word for this inner abiding place of the Spirit, which is also a place of longing, has usually been the word&nbsp;<em>soul<\/em>. We are born with our soul. <strong>The end is already planted in us at the beginning, and it gnaws away at us until we get there freely and consciously.<\/strong> &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In&nbsp;<em>The Odyssey<\/em>, the stirring of longing and dissatisfaction is symbolized by the collapse of Troy and the inability of most of the Greeks to return home. It seems<strong> they had forgotten about home, had made home in a foreign land, or were not that determined to return home (which are all excellent descriptions of the typical detours or dead ends on the spiritual journey). <\/strong>Only Odysseus was trying to get home at all costs, and he is the stand-in for what we all must be. Those who do not seek their home are symbolized perhaps by the lotus eaters whom Odysseus encounters, who forgot themselves and lost their own depths and consciousness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember Odysseus\u2019s oar that an inland wayfarer thought was a winnowing fan? His oar, a symbol of his first-half-of-life occupation, had become a tool for inner work, a means for knowing the difference between wheat and chaff, essentials and nonessentials, which is precisely the turn toward discernment and subtlety that we come to in the second half of life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s no surprise that this marks the end of Odysseus\u2019s journey. <strong>Now he can&nbsp;<em>go home<\/em>&nbsp;because he has, in fact,&nbsp;<em>come home<\/em>&nbsp;to his true and full self. <\/strong>His sailing and rowing days of mere outer performance are over, and he can now rest in the simplicity and ground of his own deeper life. He is free to stop his human&nbsp;<em>doing<\/em>&nbsp;and can at last enjoy his human&nbsp;<em>being<\/em>, at home in himself. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, like Odysseus, <strong>we leave from Ithaca and we come back to Ithaca, but now it is fully home because all is included and nothing wasted or hated; even the dark parts are used in our favor. All is forgiven. What else could homecoming be<\/strong>?! &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Poet C. P. Cavafy (1863\u20131933) expressed this understanding most beautifully in his famous poem \u201cIthaca.\u201d This is my rendering of its final lines:\u202f\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ithaca has now given you the beautiful voyage.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without her, you would never have taken the road.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the great wisdom you have gained on your voyage,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>with so much of your own experience now,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you must finally know what Ithaca really means. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>=====================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@cewgreen\">CHRIS EW GREEN<\/a>     OCT 12<\/td><td><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@cewgreen\"><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/877c5446-462d-4a8b-99af-8cbf6d200d52?j=eyJ1IjoiMmRrajIifQ.ND0qR5RKsmVnltuWgIlyr3BY7uwq2Kt9ZzX29UJK4cg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!kHzP!,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F51a2c810-f346-4ac8-a943-b9483c124c56_665x1023.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n Saint Francis in Meditation 1639<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In her book,&nbsp;<em>Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages,<\/em>&nbsp;Ann Astell, drawing on Balthasar\u2019s reading of Bonaventure\u2019s meditations, shows how Francis\u2019 reception of the stigmata was the outworking of his inner conformity to Christ:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The imprint of the wounds corresponds to the opening wide of the saint\u2019s soul\u2026 In Bonaventure\u2019s theological aesthetics,&nbsp;<em>expressio<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>impressio<\/em>belong together and are proportioned to each other. \u201cIt is significant,\u201d Balthasar insists, \u201cthat although the power of expression goes out from the Crucified, the bodily sign [of the stigmata] is imprinted only because Francis, through grace and his own inflamed love, has already become in spirit an expression of the love of the Crucified.\u201d The \u201copen seeing of faith\u201d that is an expression of Francis\u2019s soul is exactly configured to the image of the crucified Seraph, so that the image, in turn, \u201cstamps [its] impression\u201d on Francis\u2019s body.  Like Christ, the stigmatized Francis becomes a book that is \u201cwritten within and without\u201d (Ezec. 2:10).\u00b9<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The same opening-out marks, one way or another, the lives of all the saints. And it is that that draws us to them. What made and makes them so attractive is that they<strong> mirrors the love from which they do not look away. They are transfixing because they let us see them being transfigured.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m no saint.\u201d When, in everyday conversations, we say this, we imply that being a saint is about perfection, blamelessness, purity. Ironically, though, the saints we\u2019re actually drawn to are much more \u201chuman\u201d than that. We\u2019re drawn to saints like Augustine, who was open about his failings, and saints like Francis, who was unafraid of the failings and frailty of others. So, despite what we sometimes suggest, <strong>we are compelled not by the innocence of the saints but by their vulnerability and compassion\u2014their openness to God, and their God-like openness to others. They make grace visible precisely because they need it.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, the saints are not always easy for us to take. That is because their lives, attractive in their openness, <strong>disclose how much we have closed ourselves against.<\/strong> <strong>But they do not expose and shame us. They&nbsp;<em>reveal<\/em>&nbsp;us, as well as the mercy of God. A<\/strong>nd in that way they spark hope\u2014that all-consuming fire in the bramble-bush of our gut that says despite everything that it is&nbsp;<em>good<\/em>&nbsp;to be alive, here and now, to have&nbsp;<em>these&nbsp;<\/em>people around us, to have&nbsp;<em>this<\/em>&nbsp;future opening up before us.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The saints don\u2019t always look like God. They always look&nbsp;<em>to<\/em>&nbsp;God.<\/strong> Just so, they make it so we can take more of God, more of ourselves and others, more of reality in all its seeming absurdity and dumbfounding complexity. In their company, we are surprised to find we are not as out on life as we had feared we were. All that at is what this poem is trying to honor:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">The saint is a question \nGod has left open. A safe \n\nblown apart, nothing\nmissing. A flower \n\nthat blossoms for water \nto know the truth \n\nof its nature. A tear in the \nveil made of tears, \n\na wound in the shape of \nthe cleft we were borne through. \n\nThe lion\u2019s carcass\u2014\nhoneycomb sweet \n\nunder its ribs. \nThe grace of a grave \n\nrobbed of its dead. \nAn iris widening its dark. \n\nA window blue with bruised light.\nThe space in the sentence \n\nto stop, \nlistening.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>1<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ann Astell,&nbsp;<em>Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages&nbsp;<\/em>(Cornell University Press, 2006<em>),&nbsp;<\/em>127-128.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, October 14, 2026 Father Richard reflects on Homer\u2019s&nbsp;Odyssey&nbsp;as an archetypal story that reveals the necessary journey from and return to home: &nbsp; Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our true self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God, and this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27744"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27750,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27744\/revisions\/27750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}