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The Homeless at Home by Blessed Fulton Sheen

The Homeless at Home by Blessed Fulton Sheen

Last updated on: September 24, 2026 at 8:52 am by Mark Wilson

The Homeless at Home by Blessed Fulton Sheen 2026-09-24T08:52:33-05:00 Mark Wilson

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In Honor of the Beatification of Fulton Sheen, here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of

The Moral Universe A Preface To Christian Living (1936)

from the Internet Archive

That according to Read Sheen is a Public Domain Text

Plus some videos related to the Beatification.

I THE HOMELESS AT HOME

Knowledge of the moral life is conditioned
upon the removal of all prejudice.
Not everything that is novel is true,,
and what is called modern,,
may be only a new label for an old error.
Divinity which is the basis of true morality,
is often where one least expects to find it.

Every artist has the feel ing of being at home in his studio, every patriot at home in his own country, and every man at home in his house. One should therefore expect that the Creator would be at home in His own creation, and that God should be at home in the world He had made. And yet the most startling fact of human history is that when God came to earth He was homeless at home.

“He came unto His own and His own received Him not.”

Ere yet the great portals of the flesh swung open, Mary and Joseph sought in vain for a place where might be born the One to whom the heavens and earth belonged. And so when human history shall have written its last word in the scrolls of time, the saddest line of all will be:

“There was no room in the inn’.

There was room in the inn for those who bore on their breasts the screaming eagles of Rome; there was room for the daughters of the rich merchants of the
East; there was room for all clothed in fine purple and soft garments; there was room for everyone except the foster father and the mother of the One
who was to bring redemption to the world.

And so away from the inn, and out to the stable they had to go, to a crude cave into which shepherds drove their flocks in storms. In that little haven, with manger beasts as companions, and at a central point between the three great civilizations of Memphis, Athens, and Rome, something happened the only thing in the world that ever happened and mattered. That which happened was nothing less than Heaven being found on the earth as the Cry of a God cried out in the cry of a Child.

A startling paradox indeed: When God came to earth there was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. What lesson is hidden behind the inn and the stable? What is an inn, but the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the residence of the worldly, the rallying place of the fashionable, and those who count in the man agreement of the world’s affairs? What is a stable, but the place of outcasts, the refuge of beasts, and the shelter of the valueless, and therefore the symbol of those who in the eyes of public opinion do not count, and hence may be ignored as of no great value or moment? Anyone in the world would have expected to have found Divinity in an inn, but no one would have expected to have found It in a stable. Divinity,
therefore, is always where you least expect to find It.

If in those days the stars of the heavens by some magic touch had folded themselves together as silver words, and announced the birth of the Expected of
the Nations, where would the world have gone in search of Him? The world would have searched for the Babe in some palace by the Tiber, or in some
gilded house of Athens, or in some inn of a great city where gathered the rich, the mighty and the powerful ones of earth. They would not have been the least
surprised to have found the new-born King of Kings stretched out on a cradle of gold and surrounded by kings and philosophers paying to Him their tribute
and obeisance.

But they would have been surprised to have discovered Him in a manger laid on coarse straw and warmed by the breath of oxen, as if in atonement for the coldness of the hearts of men. No one would have expected that the One whose fingers could stop the turning of Arcturus would be smaller
than the head of an ox; that He who could hurl the ball of fire into the heavens would one day be warmed by the breath of beasts; or that He who could make a canopy of stars would be shielded from a stormy sky by the roof of a stable; or that He who made the earth as His future home would be home
less at home. No one would have expected to find Divinity in such a condition; but that is because

Divinity is always where you least expect to find It.

I wonder if that is not the reason why the modern world misses the discovery of Divinity. There is no doubt that it is seeking Divinity if for no other reason
than because it feels its own insufficiency and craves a God who will bring pardon for its sins and healing oil for its wounds. It seeks a Divinity who will
deliver it from the terrible restlessness and emptiness of life. But where does it seek that Divinity? It seeks it in the inns where gather the publicized, the propagandized, the popular, and the modern.

The modern world looks for Divinity and the solution of its ills in the Superman of H. G. Wells, in the Humanism of Irving Babbitt, in the Sexualism of
Sigmund Freud, in the Cynicism of Bertrand Russell, in the naturalism of modern religion, in the book of the month, in the reinterpreted Christ, in the new
morals, in the new psychology, in the new science; but in none of these inns is Divinity to be found. As it was not in the inn in the first century, so it shall
not be found in the inn of the twentieth century, for what is true of the first day is true of our own:

Divinity is always where you least expect to find It.

Suppose now that it was suggested to the modern world that the Divinity it seeks is to be found in the Church; suppose that it was hinted to all who are
seeking for Divinity that the truth it craves is to be found only in the Vicar of Christ, who, as another Peter, articulates the mind of Christ; that the Divine
Life for which it yearns is to be found only in the seven-branched fountain of the sacraments; that the pardon it begs, drops from an uplifted hand in the
confessional; that only in the Church’s attitude toward marriage can our national fabric be preserved; and only in the Church’s morality can personal virtue be regained; suppose that the modern world today was told that Bethlehem continued to our own day; that by some great miracle of God’s love the stable is now the tabernacle; the manger is startling now the ciborium; the straw is now the altar flowers; the swaddling bands are now the white species of bread, and that the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ is living among us in that tabernacle just as really and truly as in the crib suppose, I say, that such a startling declaration was made to our day and age and such a statement is just as true as it is what would be the answer of the modern world?

It would say: “That is absurd. The Church is antiquated, unmodern, behind the times; it is ignored by all the great Universities of our land; its dogmas are myths; its moral, passe; its belief in the Real Presence of Christ on the altar, impossible. Why should our Lord ever live under the species of bread? Why should truth be sought in that which the world ignores? No one today ever thinks of going to the Church in search of Divinity.” But that is just exactly what the world thought in the first century. No one ever thought of going to a stable in search of the Truth and Life of the Son of God. But that is most likely where it is to be found, for

Divinity is always where you least expect to find It.

The world has always missed Divinity either because it has sought it in the wrong places, or because it has ignored the wrong things. It has sought Divinity in Power, in Popularity, in Progress, in Science; it has ignored the possibility of ever finding it in simplicity, in the unexpected, in defeat, and in frailty. And yet the sign of Divinity will always be the sign of seeming weakness

“This shall be to you a sign: A Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger/’

The world has always sought Divinity in the power of a Babel, but never in the weakness of a Bethlehem; it has searched for it in the inns ofpopular opinion, but never in the stable of the ignored; it has looked for it in the cradles of gold but never in the cribs o straw. Always in Power, but never in weakness. But Divinity came to earthly life in the form of a helpless Babe, and left it in the form of a helpless Man. If God, therefore, is to be found by us, He must be sought in weakness and defeat, but a weakness under which there is Power, and a defeat after which there is Victory.

God will be found only by those who sing the Hymn of the Conquered and search the forgotten stables and scan the ignoble crosses. This great lesson of the Incarnation is to be remembered as the great Drama of Christian morality is unfolded. In the following chapters will be treated such old themes as God as the ground of morality, the necessity of mortification, the beauty of a retired life, the sanctity of marriage, the fact of sin, the need of Redemption,
future judgment, the existence of hell, the joy of defeat all the pillars of the Christian moral edifice but now so long forgotten as to be new; all homeless truths, for the inns of the modern world ignore them; all homeless truths because there are few who take them to heart; all homeless maxims because welcomed only by those whom the world ignores; all homeless gifts like the Babe of Bethlehem. The world certainly does not expect to find Divinity insuch a homeless moral but

Divinity is always where you least expect to find It,
and only where He was homeless, are you and I at home.

This world is wild as an old wive’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war.
But our rest is as far as the fire drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clash and thunder unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening,
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
A Child in a Foul Stable
Where wild beasts feed and foam
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home.*

From Collected Poems, by G. K.. Chesterton. Permission Dodd, Mead
and Co., publishers

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