I am very honored and grateful to be able to celebrate my
first weekend Mass here at St. Clare on this Trinity Sunday and on Father’s
Day—I’m very happy that my own father is able to join us today, making the trek
from Geneva, along with other family members, coming in from Madison, my home
town. After five years assigned to
parishes on the west side, I’m so glad to be home.
One of the hallmarks of living in this part of the country,
is that you can still see signs of the many great family businesses upon which
our country was founded. Family farms,
family-run construction companies, restaurants, funeral homes,
landscapers. In fact, I grew up working
alongside my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in a family
business out in Madison.
Family businesses pride themselves on professionalism,
fine-tuned craftsmanship, fidelity to their customers, and extensive experience
spanning generations. It’s not unlikely
to see utility vans driving down Mayfield Rd with names of family businesses like
“DeFranco and Sons, McBride and Sons, DiCicco and Sons”.
The Father and Son business is one of the great
institutions. The father passes on not
only his name, but his trade. And the
son is proud to have the name of his father because that name stands for
something great. I think the happiest
moments in a child’s life are when he is able to share in his family’s work: going
to the work place, learning the tools and the skills, the meaning of hard work.
Jesus, not only practiced the trade of his foster-Father,
Joseph the Carpenter, but the work for which he became one of us, was the trade
of his heavenly Father: salvation and holiness.
We heard in the Gospel today: God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have
eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.”
From the moment of man’s first sin in the garden, when he rebelled against
God, when he took the gifts God gave him for granted, when he disobeyed the
heavenly Father’s command, God, in his mercy was at work to redeem man, to
restore man’s divine sonship. And God
sent his only Son to bring that work to completion.
If God’s work is the salvation of souls, what are the tools
of his trade? Truth and charity! Jesus preaches the Gospel and pours himself
out on the cross for our salvation to restore our lost communion with God.
Through the great gift of the Holy Spirit what Jesus won on
the cross is available to all men.
Through Christian Baptism, the Holy Spirit brings us back into right
relationship with God, making us adopted sons of the heavenly Father through
Jesus Christ. We can truly call God
Father because we have been brought back into right relationship with God
through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Saint John Paul II said we are made “sons in the Son.” Being adopted children of God, John Paul
said, “is the culminating point of the mystery of our Christian life. In fact,
the name 'Christian' indicates a new way of being, to be in the likeness of the
Son of God. As sons in the Son, we share in salvation, which is not only the
deliverance from evil” but is also to share in the very goodness and life of God.
Heaven is not just playing golf for all eternity, but
sharing in the very life and glory of God, which begins in Christian baptism
here on earth.
Yet, baptism is not a guarantee of heaven. We must remain in right relationship with God
through a life of prayer and charity.
Christians get in a lot of trouble when we take our sonship for
granted. We must constantly be about our
Father’s work in order to remain in right relationship. To be a Christian is to work in the family
business—the family of the trinity. The
business? The glory of God and salvation
of souls. Our lives, our work, our daily
decisions, are to all be at the service of God’s glory and the salvation of
man.
And here’s the real kicker: just as God the Father of love
desires us to learn and practice his trade, so too does the Father of
Lies. The enemy, the devil, is all too
ready to teach us his trade: arrogance, disobedience, lies, the pursuit of
power and inordinate pursuit of possession and pleasure. “All these things I will give you, if you
call me Father.” He tells us the same lie as he told Adam and
Eve in the Garden, “you will be happier if you ignore God, follow your own
feelings, be your own person.” He
teaches us to love video games more than prayer, booze more than worship, sin
more than virtue. The enemy is a liar,
but his lies are convincing, just look at our culture. 80% of Catholics aren’t coming to Mass
because they think what they have to do is more important. They have swallowed the lie. They have forgotten the face of their Father. In the end, the family business of the father
of lies brings unhappiness, exhaustion, and if we do not break away from his
dysfunctional family, we will inherit not eternal glory and happiness, but
damnation, the loss of eternal life with God in heaven.
So we must remain in right relationship with God through
prayer, attendance at Mass, study of Scripture, and works of charity. We must engage in the Lord’s work of going
out into the world, filled with the zeal and fervor of the Holy Spirit, to call
those who have fallen away back to right relationship with God. That is what Christ did, that is what we are
to do. He sends us out to draw the
fallen back to God. That’s the family
business, that’s the work of the Father, to draw men back to God through the
preaching of the Gospel and the embrace of the cross.
In the end, there is nothing that will bring us more earthly
joy or eternal joy than being in right relationship with Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, and sharing in his work.
On this Trinity Sunday, let us rededicate ourselves to
fervent perseverance in the family trade, and relinquish our disordered desires
of doing anything but, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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