Real Estate

Individuals and couples spend on average one third of their disposable income each month on mortgage repayments.  This piece of research during the last week will surprise few if any, and certainly not the many thousands of people struggling to keep up with such repayments.  It is, however, a piece of information which tells us much about ourselves as a people and as individuals:  the high value we place on ownership and on having a place of our own, a legacy perhaps of our history with its litany of displacement; the deep down desire for security even if it entails an uncertain journey  to get there; a fundamental common sense approach to life, planning for the future, which belies some of our other more happy-go-lucky tendencies.

Ownership, security at a price, planning for the future — all of them deeply rooted in the human psyche and having much more to do with the building and buying boom than merely material means.  Ownership, security at a price, planning for the future, each of them revealing the action of our Triune God.  A God who has “ventured to take to himself one nation”; a Spirit given that is “the spirit of sons and daughters … not the Spirit of slaves” making us “heirs of God”; facing a future firmly built on the security of God with us to the end of time.  The Father, Creator and Builder, the Son, Saviour and Security and the Spirit making us holy and wholesome into the future — the God of St. Patrick, a Trinity of Persons, his and our breastplate, our security and salvation when even our earthly house collapses —

Of whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation—

Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Fr. Eamon Devlin, CM

11th June 2006