God as neighbour

I live on a farm where I have God as neighbour. Strange as it may sound, he is there just 50 meters from my doorstep. He has been there since I was born. My parents moved to this farm 1982 and immediately wanted to have, since they had it on their previous farm, the holy eucharist present. To be a catholic in Sweden today is, as my brother Clemens coined, “to be a stranger”. Almost all catholic churches was seized by the protestant state around 1540s. So today, if you want to have a church, you must build it yourself. My parents started building a chapel as soon as they arrived. Later it became a consecrated church, a very little church, the smallest in the diocese and consequently the smallest of all catholic churches in Sweden. Nevertheless Jesus Christ is present there in the tabernacle, completely. He is my neighbour. To live with God as neighbour creates a presence that is discovered in silence in front of the tabernacle. I love to sit there with just candles lighting the church. This little church is the heart of the farm. The church bell tells about it, the red oil lamp indicates the place and the prayers witness about it. He waits there in darkness. I think it has made a mark on my life, because you always relate to him hiding in this little church wherever you are on the farm or if you are walking in the forests and fields in the vicinity, a reference point as well as a refuge. And maybe it is not he that is my neighbour, but I his? It must be so, but in secret.