O Come, O Come Emmanuel

I'm back!

This advent, I want to focus on verses of Christmas and Advent carols. I'll be starting this week with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," which may well be my favorite of the entire lot.  I don't pretend to know much of the history of the carols, although my friend Clara Biesel does.  I'll try to ask her each week for at least a little on that week's carol.  But I want to get closer to Christmas and Advent both this year, and music was what once drew me more than anything else.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice!  Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

This time of year, my family thinks and talks a lot about my father Judge Tom Mulvaney.  And I often wonder why I don't connect more with a motto of his that should be right up my alley: "The purpose of life on Earth is to make one's self ready for eternal life with God."  Perhaps it's just the formality of his words.  Even on the bench, he seemed much more natural.

But stories of exile are all about longing to return home, are they not?  About being alone.  Ex-patriot stories are different.  Full of adventure and finding of the self.  About claiming a new country and birthright or finding that the foibles and terrors of your culture are not a universal part of human nature but a choice that can be un-chosen.

I've written a novel about the ultimate exile -- sleeping beauty removed from her home by time.  Completely beyond the hope of repeal of her sentence and being reunited with her home and her family.  So I suppose it's no surprise that that is the phrase that connects.

We remember no life but this one.  We build homes and families and ties to this world.  But we are born exiles.  We are born away from our true home.  We are born in a world where we do not fully fit, always aching for pardon and return home even as we build lives here.

We do not belong here.  We are aching for home.

In an otherwise troublesome book, Till We Have Faces, a brand new queen makes her first act on the throne the freeing of her beloved tutor (and true father figure) from his slavery.  She is then dismayed and shocked that the other men of her confidence immediately start congratulating him and offering to help him pack for his trip home.  He later tells her that he has passed the test, and that he will stay to help her out of love rather than stumbling home.

In Winter's Tale, a servant named Camillo who was forced to flee his country in order to avoid the king's order to kill his friend and the king of a neighboring kingdom is willing to cause all kinds of fuss and misunderstandings simply on the hope that he will have to return home to settle the matter later.  He receives his wish and comes home to joyful and magic reunions.

We all connect with this emotion, somewhere deep down.  It is not one that requires a great leap of empathy or the assistance of mighty words to comprehend.  It is the call of our souls.  We are in lonely exile here on Earth.  Trying to build as best a life we can.  Trying to do the best we can.

But ready in a moment to be called home.  Eager for when we will all be there together again.

How much more remarkable to find that Jesus instead came to us.  And that He will come again -- to us here.  That this place will one day not be a place of exile but a home in its own right.

That's why what we do here matters so much -- and why perhaps I struggle with my father's motto.  The Kingdom of God is now and here, I've said many times before in earlier years on this blog.  This feels like a place that is not our home and thus beneath our true interest.  But it's not.  It will be God's home truly and fully someday.  We will make this our home.

So we need to build a Kingdom of which God could be proud -- as well as we can.  We may be in lonely exile, but we are meant to do work while we are there, as Camillo did.  The same worthy service that maneuvered him into a position to do the good work that won him passage home at last.  To be fair, the same worthy service that kept him in exile working hard for the good of an earthly realm -- but that very work also made him fit for heaven.

So yes, the purpose is returning Home.  But it's important to remember that this land will not be abandoned.  So it's just as important to build a home here that we can imagine God choosing to dwell in.