Are you aching for home?

Before I moved to Glasgow in 2021, I lived and worked in Germany for almost 12 years.

As a native South African, I qualified to apply for German citizenship after a couple of years. There was, however, an important caveat. I would have to renounce my South African citizenship as part of the process. To many of my loved ones this was a no-brainer: “Do it,” they said, “a German passport is far more useful than a green mamba” – as we fondly refer to our bottle-green passports.

But I couldn’t bring myself to proceed. Germany wasn’t my home. I often found myself yearning for some notion of home. The longer I lived abroad the harder it became to be certain that a return to South Africa would satisfy this ache, but it was still the object of that deep-seated hope. To take some liberties with G.K. Chesterton’s words: “Home is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory … we are all kings in exile.”

Homes real and desired

In Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide scholar Gerard O’Daly wrote of “homes real and desired”, existing somewhere between memories and hopes, intertwined with who we understand ourselves to be.

Augustine started writing The City of God in 413AD in response to the ripple effects of the sack of Rome. In which city should we find our belonging and acceptance?

“Two cities, then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self. The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, ‘Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head’.”

Home is where the love is. Augustine does not shy away from the ache of our yearning for home. We are, after all, created for communion with a good heavenly Father. Yet he also points to the disordering effect of allowing a love of self to become our centre of gravity. As Jesus reminded His disciples: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”

As Christians we are citizens of the heavenly city, and it is our home. But this side of eternity we are constantly bombarded by that other, earthly, city. It urges us to grasp at freedom, mastery, glory, and the praise of men. We are in this earthly city, but we are not of it. As pilgrims we follow Jesus – the truly glorious lifter of our heads – to the eternal home we already carry in our hearts.

When I first read O’Daly’s phrase “homes real and desired”, I instinctively tried to assign one of these labels to the earthly and heavenly cities respectively, but in doing so I was missing another central point: both of the cities are real and desired. Real, because we give real allegiance to both. Desired, because they are both created by who we choose to love and, as St Clare of Assisi reminds us: “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.”