When the Homily is about Immunology

Where are you going with Jesus?

This was the question posed to me by my 4YO son as I cruised past his bed room with a 1/2 (or so) life size corpus icon of our Lord in my arms. We had commissioned it from Kh. Heather of St. Thomas Mission and she really did a wonderful job, and I was bringing it downstairs from its safe house (our room) for Rade to take some measurements because he has graciously taken it upon himself to build the cross upon which this icon will be mounted.

And so having taken said measurements we laid our Lord upon the dining room table, poured a couple of glasses of liquid bread and sat down to chat for awhile. Gardening, sustainable farming, livestock issues, building a barn, guns, how to get chickens to use the nests we built them etc were all a part of the discussion. But the nearness and size of the beautiful icon was ever present (how could it not be?). And it occurred to me how symbolic this little synaxis was in demonstrating how far I have come in my life. Not in terms of grand fiscal success or anything of the sort, but in regard to how different my life is than how I might have predicted it would be at pretty much any other time in my life.

How could I have imagined that I would be sitting amidst acreage upon which I am beginning to farm and ranch, with a wife more lovely and pious than ever I could have dreamed, four rowdy yet joy filled children in bed suffering the effects of the time change, and chatting and sipping beers with a Serbian agrarian monarchist, while a giant Orthodox Icon of Christ crucified lays upon the table before us all.