Where do you live?

Last Saturday morning, as part of our vocation discernment weekend, we had a prayerful PowerPoint with various questions, such as who are you looking for? and where do you live? And it was this question which struck me in a thoroughly new and unexpected way during the presentation, and stayed with me during the time of reflection and prayer afterwards.

Where do you live? In John's Gospel two disciples ask this question of Jesus, eliciting the famous reply - Come and see. But this time, with strength and depth, it was Jesus who asked the question of me. And I found myself answering at different levels.

Where do you live? The simple, immediate reply was that I live in Oxford, in a lovely old house filled with students. Why? And here I found myself recalling a reflection by Pedro Arrupe SJ, about falling and staying in love with God, where he writes What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything ... and that includes where I live and who I live with. I fell in love with God and became an RSCJ; I stayed in love, and now here I am, in Oxford, delighted to be here. And in a sense, too, I "live" in the Society, because this is where I'm at home.

But where do you live? And here I heard the question at a deeper level, and answered accordingly. I live in the Heart of Jesus, because this is my home, and where I am in my home. This, to paraphrase Paul in Acts, is where I live and move and have my being; where I can rest and be renewed, and where I learn to love more deeply and tenderly. And I know I wouldn't want to live anywhere else!

And you... where do you live? And why do you live there?