Traveling back to Pittsburgh from home is, as I believe I've mentioned before, always a struggle. It's always tough to leave Providence again, and to deal with the nagging feeling that I'm journeying in the wrong direction. The hardest part, without fail, is saying goodbye...saying goodbye to my parents, my brothers, my sisters, knowing that I'm not going to see them for months. These were the thoughts running through my head as I brooded on my return to the Steel City.
One of the most depressing thoughts that occurred to me was that every "hello" is merely the prelude to an inevitable "goodbye." No matter the circumstances, every human relationship ends up in parting. As you can imagine, this did little to improve my state of mind.
But as I thought about it a little more, I realized that my original impulse couldn't be more wrong, that in fact I had everything backwards. It is not that goodbyes are the unavoidable product of hellos, but that the partings are preludes to reunion. This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comforts of the Catholic faith: the realization that even death is merely a temporary separation. So tonight, I won't think of the goodbyes that are behind me, but of the hellos that are yet to come.
"Consequently, friendship is, as it were, concomitant with perfect happiness." --St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae Q4 a8 ad 3
Peace and God bless!
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