Fathers' Day Homily

The theme of today’s readings is easy to discern.  In all three readings we have portraits of forgiveness.  Portraits which can give us great consolation and hope.

First we have David.  He was a strong, virtuous, and God-fearing man.  God had chosen David to be king of Israel.  God had chosen him to be his viceroy, his lieutenant, his stand in, for the chosen people.  God had chosen David for a position similar in some ways to being Pope.

And at one point in his life, David succumbed to temptation, and committed two of the greatest sins: lustful adultery, and then murder.  Today Nathan confronts David in the name of God about his sins and David repents, he makes a simple deep act of contrition, Psalm, and is forgiven. 

David remains king, and continues to be called the “man after God’s own heart.”  Not because he didn’t sin, but because he learned from his sin, he understood God’s love and mercy, and therefore, made a good king…some would say an even better king, because he knew what it was to be human.  Capable of great love and fidelity, and simultaneously capable of great treachery and destruction.  And this knowledge: every human person’s ability for both good and bad, is one of the steps in wisdom and fulfillment.

The second portrait is of a young woman.  She finds Jesus dining in the home of a religious leader and lawyer.  Although she has no right to do so, she pays no attention to what people might think, she barges in and makes this incredible act of intimate thanksgiving.  She gushes tears of catharsis on his feet and dries them tenderly with her hair.  And then kissed his feet.  Jesus does not withdraw from this display of extraordinary intimacy.  He gives her the gift of this intimacy.  Why? 

Not because she has won his affection through good living.  Not because she is perfect and virtuous and pious.  But because she needs his affection if she is going to be good.  She needs his love and forgiveness if she is going to be virtuous.  She needs intimacy with him if she is going to be pious.

This is why it is so powerful that Jesus taught us to call God our Father.  To realize that God IS Father.  He is our loving Father.

Fathers and mothers don’t love their children because they are good.  They love them, so that they will be good.

Fathers, when your child was born did you think, “hm, this one seems strong, virtuous, and intelligent…I think I’ll love it.”?  No, you loved your son or daughter in total weakness, in complete incomprehension, in absolute ignorance of anything but eating.

It is through your nurturing the child, loving the child, teaching the child, that it can grow up to be strong, good, and smart.

It is the same with us, God’s children. 

He doesn’t love us because we are good.  He loves us so that we can be good.

The primary goal of the spiritual life is to come to have a deep and abiding knowledge of the unconditional love that God the Father has for us.  To feel in our souls that love.  And that even if we, as overall good people, sin big time, even if we sin as terribly as David, lusting, betraying, murdering kinds of sins.  We never lose the love of God, although in sin we can feel cut off from it, and if we just simply turn to him and ask for forgiveness he opens up the storehouses of grace and will help us move beyond the sins that trap us, towards freedom and fulfillment.

And if you find yourself here tonight, harsh and judgmental of yourself, unable to experience or feel the forgiveness and intimacy of God, unable to feel your own soul’s worth…then learn from the woman in today’s gospel.  Don’t care about what people will think, don’t care about what you have or haven’t done, don’t listen: Aren’t good, God doesn’t love you, Lies.  Just throw yourself on the feet of Jesus and let him give you a gift of intimate love, acceptance, and mercy. 

And on this Fathers’ Day I ask you to call to mind one particularly beautiful image of the unconditional love of Fatherhood, from your father, or something you did as a father, or something a friend or family member has done, and carry that image from here and into the Our Father when we pray it. 

My image is the day of my ordination as a deacon, when my Dad told me that he, who had been Southern Baptist all his life, was going to start RCIA so that he could understand and connect to what I was doing in my vocation, and if possible, become Catholic in time for my priestly ordination.

Carry your image or memory from now to the Our Father…Trusting that the Lord God looks at you with this kind of love and support.

Intro to the Lord's Prayer:  It is at the savior’s command, and formed by divine teaching… and today, informed by the image of fatherly love that we have been carrying with us...that we dare to say…