Doing your own thing and going...

...to your own place.

This might not sound too bad to many people, especially today.

In fact, your "own place" sounds very attractive, fulfilling the perennial dream of home ownership.

Except in today’s first reading (Acts 1:15-17, 20-26), where we hear that “Judas turned away to go to his own place.”

...where the neighbors are infernally noisy and the thermostat is forever broken.

(Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.)

This quick reference to Judas’ fate is more than just a euphemism: it also gives us a quick and fundamental idea of what hell is.

Teenagers often yearn for their “own place” where they are no longer under their parents’ authority, only to learn the painful realities of the world beyond their parents’ sheltering and nurturing care (which they had long taken for granted).

Likewise, you and I often take for granted the sheltering and nurturing care that God gives his creatures in this world, most especially his human children.

We may not always be conscious of that sheltering and nurturing care in the Creation given us by God, for we are not immune from the deleterious effects of our sin, as individuals and as humanity, but nothing in our imagination could ever prepare us for the horror and the terror, the screaming emptiness and the suffocating darkness, that awaits us in our “own place” – a place we have prepared for ourselves by our free will turned to evil, a place totally apart from God, without even the comforts of his creation, let alone the touch of his Spirit.

(Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.)

May we not seek our “own place” but the place of the Lord.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God;
have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house
there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you
that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am
you also may be.
Where I am going
you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him,
“I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me."