11th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - Father's Day lessons from Pope Francis

 Happy Father’s Day (weekend). There was a book published a few years ago, called “Our Father: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer by Pope Francis”. And the book contains a conversation between Holy Father Francis and an Italian priest and prison chaplain named Father Marco Pozza. 

And in this conversation, Pope Francis offers his insight into the words that our Blessed Lord taught us to pray. What it means to call upon God the Father, and so on. But, he also reflected upon the importance of our earthly fathers. And I think it significant that Pope Francis has this conversation with a prison chaplain. Because so many of the imprisoned—in Italy, in the united states, and around the world, are men and women, who more than often have very broken relationships with their earthly fathers. 

Statistics are abundantly clear: when a child is raised without a father there is a greater risk of behavioral problems; they are more likely to commit a crime and go to prison. They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, more likely to suffer obesity, more likely to drop out of school, and to experience poverty. Teen girls without fathers are 7x more likely to get pregnant as a teen.

On the other hand fathers involved in their children’s lives improve their children’s overall emotional and social well-being, those kids do better in school, they are less likely to carry guns and deal drugs. Good fathers reduce the parenting stress of the mothers. Fathers help their children to be honest, ethical, hardworking adults. 

The impact on religious life is also striking. Data shows if a father does not go to church, even if his wife does, only 1 child in 50 will become a regular church goer. But, if a father does go regularly, regardless of what the mother does, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will attend church as adults. 

Raising a family in today’s culture us tremendously challenging. So in the course of his conversation with that prison chaplain, Pope Francis offered five pieces of wisdom, which I will now share. 

“The first thing needed is this,” Pope Francis said, “that the father be present in the family; that he be close to his wife, to share everything, joys and sorrows, hardships and hopes. A father needs to be close to the children as they grow up; when they are playing and when they are working on a task; when they are carefree and when they are troubled.”

Presence. Closeness. Earthly fatherhood is to be a reflection of the Heavenly Father, and scripture speaks over and over of God’s closeness to his people. Deuteronomy asks, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?” Psalm 16 says, “Because God is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” And Psalm 145 says, “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.” Hebrews says, God will NEVER leave us or forsake us. So, earthly fathers must be involved, be near, and be present in all of those family activities and tasks. After a long grueling day at work, it is difficult to be “emotionally present” to one’s family. But’s it vital. 

Secondly, Pope Francis explains that God the Father gives earthly fathers an example to follow in patience. God loves us even when we are sinners, Paul says in the second reading today. And so Fathers have to be patient,” he explained. Love is patient. Children really can test one’s patience. But as Scripture says “God is slow to anger…so Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger dwells in the heart of fools.” Learn to count to 10 and inwardly ask, “Is what I’m about to do or say going to help my kid or hurt my kid emotionally?”

And many times, the Pope admits, “there is nothing that can be done, like the father in the story of the Prodigal son, but wait in patience, kindness, generosity, and mercy, and pray.”

Now, patience doesn’t mean you aren’t to discipline your children. And that’s the third word of wisdom, Pope Francis says discipline, but don’t humiliate.  Scriptures says, “do not fail to correct your children…a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother” Children who are not disciplined often grow up rebellious, have no respect for authority, and as a result find it difficult to willingly obey and follow God. God Himself uses discipline to correct us and lead us down the right path and to encourage repentance for our wrong actions. Hebrews says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” 

Fourthly, Pope Francis explains that Father’s need to be a source of comfort in their children’s failures. “Children need to find a father who is waiting for them when they return from their failures. These children will do all they can in order not to admit their mistakes, not to let their embarrassment show, but they need this security. Not finding their father at the door opens wounds inside them that are difficult to heal.” Let your children know that they can come to you in their failures: business failures, relationship failures, moral failures. That you will help them overcome their challenges and to learn wisdom from their failures.

Finally, the Pope reminds earthly Fathers to have constant recourse to the heavenly Father in prayer and the practice of religion. “Without the grace that comes from the Father who is in Heaven,” the Pope says, “fathers lose courage and abandon the field.” Fathers please speak to your children about the importance of Faith. Tell them why you go to Church. Why you receive Holy Communion. How Catholicism is indispensable. 

Fathers, when the grace of God is evident in your life, that touches the hearts of your children like nothing else in this life. Your witness, your faith is indispensable, irreplaceable. The Pope says, “The Church, our mother, is committed to supporting the good and generous presence of fathers in families. Fathers: you are in our prayers, for your vocation is vital.

In the Gospel, we heard how “at the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” So many in the world today are troubled and abandoned--fatherless. Perhaps, some of you have wounds of abandonment--physical or emotional. And the Lord looks upon all the abandoned and offers the healing of his sacred heart, and calls all the abandoned to mercy.

But the Lord sends us out as laborers, just like he did the apostles, to the troubled and abandoned of the world: to bring God’s love, God’s healing, God’s grace, the message of the Gospel, to be baptized, to have faith in Christ, to receive his body and blood. May we be generous and faithful in this holy calling of ours, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021 - Stormy Seas and Fathers

 In Scripture, the roaring untamed sea is often a symbol of the destructive, chaotic powers of nature beyond the control of man. 

The very first page of the Bible speaks of “Tohu wa bohu” in the Hebrew, the primal chaotic waters. Yet, those untamed waters are quickly brought under the control of the Most High God and Lord of Creation who brings light and life out of the darkness as he breaths forth his Spirit and calls creation into being.

The book of Exodus contains another frightening body of water. As Pharoah’s chariots and charioteers close in on the Israelites, God’s people are trapped by the uncrossable Red Sea. It is not until God intervenes, demonstrating again that He is the Lord and Master of Creation, that the Israelites are able to cross the untamable sea, on their road toward freedom.

In today’s Gospel, the apostles become trapped and tossed about on a stormy sea. Again, the stormy waters stand for the chaos of life beyond our control—all those difficulties both interior and exterior, physical and psychological that beset us—the dark depths always threatening to swallow us up. 

Throughout the centuries Church fathers have explained that the boat traversing through the stormy sea in the Gospel today stands for the Church through the ages—the Barque of Peter making her way through the centuries amidst persecution and warring nations, the violent winds of worldly error.  The waves crashing against the boat, the winds whipping around them are symbolic of everything that besets the Church, and besets the individual Christian. 

In the course of the Christian life, the disciples of Jesus have to face chaos, anxiety, darkness, and bafflement .

The storm in the Gospel today must have been of unique severity, after all the apostles were experienced fisherman, experienced sailors on the Sea of Galilee. It was their home turf—well, their home “surf”—so to speak. They knew these waters well, they’d fished there before, with their fathers and their fathers before them.  They knew its changes and dangers. And for these experienced boatmen to have been so terrified speaks to how terrible this storm must have been. For in the midst of their terror they cry out “Lord, save us.” 

Those were the right words. Scripture is filled with such cries the Psalms especially:  Out of the depths I call to you, LORD; Lord, hear my cry! Says Psalm 130.  Scripture even instructs us to call out to God in times of trouble: Psalm 50, says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you.”

When we find ourselves lost and in the shadow of death—when we are facing the great struggles and storms of life—the Scriptures teach us to call out to God. When in our desperation we feel utterly incapable of helping or saving ourselves, we are meant to turn to Almighty God, and cry, “Lord, save us”  

This Gospel especially teaches us that the Lord hears our cries. The Lord of all creation is in the boat with us. We are never alone. Just as the Spirit of God brought order out of chaotic waters in the book of Genesis, Jesus, the Incarnate Power of God, can bring order, and peace, and calm, and new life—new creation, out of the stormy darkness of our life. I don’t know about you, but that gives me comfort.

This reading always reminds me of a story. When I was younger, my father and uncles together purchased a boat. A beautiful 55 foot antique wooden Chris-Craft that they had docked in Fairport Harbor, about 15 miles west of my hometown of Madison. And, when I was about 8 years old, one summer day, my father announced that he and I would be paddling our rubber raft from the shore just north of our house, and my uncle would be picking us up on the boat. It was a grey day, windy and drizzling when we set off from shore, and not 10 minutes into this little trek, huge dark clouds came out of nowhere. The rain intensified, the waves whipped up. 

But my dad was there. And I felt safe. Come to found out, you’re really not supposed to do that, paddle into an oncoming thunderstorm on lake erie, but, I felt safe. Dad was there, just like Jesus in the boat today.

On this Father’s Day, we reflect on the role that Fathers have in the life of the church, in the lives of our families. No one can replace them. A man in the life of a child cannot be replaced. Our culture might say different, but our culture is of course confused about a great many things.

During this Year of St. Joseph we consider a particular man, chosen by God to have a role in the life of Jesus. A man who was guardian, protector, provider, and leader in the practice of the Faith for his Family.

St. Joseph took great efforts that Jesus lacked nothing he needed for healthy development. Faithfully guarding the Christ-Child’s life when the family was forced to live as refugees in Egypt. Instructing Jesus in his work as a carpenter.

In an age that needs strong, virtuous, faith-filled fathers, we do well to turn to Joseph, Ite ad Ioseph, go to Joseph, as a role model and a heavenly intercessor—that Catholic men may become fathers like the Father of Jesus—strong pillars of faith for their family. 

Many forces in our culture today contribute to the breakdown of the family, minimizing the role that fathers are meant to play in the lives of their children. As the family has broken down, so has the culture. So, our culture, our parish, and our church need men to step up and be active guardians, workers, strong models of virtue and faith. Not as the culture teaches, but as our Faith teaches and St. Joseph models.

Fathers filled with strong-faith are meant to be Jesus in the boat for us who bring calm to the storms of our lives.

Grateful for our fathers, grateful for the many ways that God has comforted us in the midst of the storms of our lives, the many ways that Jesus has quieted the storms and chaos surrounding us and within us, may we continue this eucharistic celebration with all thanksgiving and confidence in God’s saving help. And may the Lord transform us, that we may bring his peace and life-giving word into the lives and storms of others for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Holy Family 2019 - Families centered on Jesus

I recently came across an article from the Telegraph, a british periodical, which reported on a study of what 2000 children put on their wish-list for Christmas.  A “pet horse” was the third most popular choice.  Many children asked for ipads and ipods.  Some quirky kids asked for a “time machine”, “a donkey”, “an elephant”, or a “real live reindeer”.

Yet, atop this list of toys and treats, at the number one spot, was…can you guess? It was the request for a new baby brother or sister.  The days of large families have come to an end, especially in Europe, whose population is in decline because the birth rate is so low.  Our nation, as well, has tipped into negative population growth for a number of reasons including the breakdown of marriages, divorce, gross materialism, and the explosion in use of artificial contraception. Families are having less children, in fact, we are even seeing a decline in families in general—less marriages means less children.

And so this request for a new baby brother or sister is very telling—children are yearning, not for toys and electronics, but for real human experience, real family experiences. 

Another item on this Christmas wish list is also very telling.  In the number 10 spot, children asked..again not for electronic devices or material possessions, but for a dad.  ‘A Dad’—‘a father’—is not something children should not have to put on their Christmas list.  Children know that ‘a dad’ should not be missing from their life.

This is not to say that single-parents are not courageous and trying their hardest to provide for a healthy, loving, holy upbringing for their children.  But as Catholics we acknowledge the Creator’s design for the family as being very important for the emotional and psychological and spiritual health of children.

Statistics show many of the consequences of fatherless households.  Boys whose parents are divorced or never married are two to three times more likely to end up in jail as adults. Children whose parents get and stay married are healthier and also much less likely to suffer mental illness, including depression and teen suicide.

Many of us today may have more formal education, money and opportunities than our ancestors.  Yet family life and marriage is also crumbling like never before.  The fact that a sibling and a dad ranked so high on these Christmas wish-lists is very disturbing.  But it is also a sign of hope.  These children who long for a father, who long for a healthy family, seem to know that families should be healthier than they are, and we hope they will commit to starting and maintaining holy families when their time comes…which makes today’s feast so important, we turn our attention to what makes a Holy Family?

The Feast of the Holy Family is a relatively new feast to the liturgical calendar, it was added after Vatican II. Already in the 1960s the Council fathers detected the breakdown of families. They sought to the brace the Church for the upcoming cultural revolutions which would have even greater devastating effects, and to turn our attention to what will sustain us, guide us, and inspire us.

The Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Joseph is the story of a family who trusts in God amidst quite difficult circumstances: a teenage mother conceiving a child before the wedding, a foster father grappling with God’s plan, even considering ending his betrothal, a poor couple forced to flee their homeland to a foreign soil because of a hostile government threatened their child. They lived as immigrants in the land that once held their ancestors as slaves.

But, despite their challenges, this family practiced absolute fidelity to God. The Holy Family stands beside all who worry, who struggle, who search, who pray.  For they gave themselves fully to God, and made their family life a prayer and sacrifice for God.

The disintegration of the family I spoke about earlier is no doubt proportional to culture’s growing disregard for God and God’s plans. Unlike Mary and Joseph in the Gospel today who search desperately for the Lord when he became lost, searching for Jesus, making God the center of their lives, is often the last concern for modern families.

Last year, on the Feast of the Holy Family, Pope Francis commented on the need to follow Mary and Joseph’s example of searching for Jesus, he said, “That anguish [Mary and Joseph] felt in the three days of the loss of Jesus should also be our anguish when we are far from Him, when we are far from Jesus. We should feel anguish when we forget about Jesus for more than three days, without praying, without reading the Gospel, without feeling the need for his presence and his consoling friendship,” he said.

“Mary and Joseph looked for him and found him in the temple while he was teaching: for us too,  it is above all in the house of God that we can meet the divine Master and welcome his message of salvation.” The Holy Father speaks about the importance of praying together and worshiping together as a family, particularly in the house of God, at Sunday Mass. Families that pray together stay together.  Families, too, who are involved in some sort of volunteer work together, radiate with the light of God. But that key word is “together”. Praying together, worshiping together, serving together.

Separate televisions in separate rooms, separate meals at separate times, separate this and separate that, can perpetuate real and unhealthy spiritual and familial separateness if we are not vigilant. So, families need to nurture togetherness, spiritual and religious togetherness especially in a culture that is driving families apart. And really, all of us, single, married, celibate, widowed, grandparents and godparents need to be at the service of families, helping them to be holy and whole.

Today the Church calls our attention to not three separate people, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but a unity of persons, bound together by their love for each other and God. By imitating the love and virtues of the Holy Family may all of the woundedness and divisions in our own families be healed, as we like them, seek to place Jesus at the center of everything we do and everything we are.

Pope Francis said, “The family of Nazareth is holy: because it was centered on Jesus.” May all of the families of our parish and in our neighborhood grow in holiness by the same means, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Priesthood Sunday 2018 - Master, I want to See

In my nine and a half years of priesthood, I’ve had the honor of living and serving with almost a dozen priests. One was a former Certified Public Accountant, one was called to the priesthood later in life after having children and being left a widower; one had taken a year off of seminary to work to support his mother after the death of his father, another liked to begin every homily with a joke. One priest was among our diocese’s most talented organists, another likes hunting wild boar; one liked to dine on fine white tablecloths, another has visited more hospitalized, sick, and dying Catholics than the rest combined.

I’ve been inspired by my brother priests, frustrated by my brother priests, have laughed with and cried with my brother priests, played video games, and attended opera, gone on pilgrimage and debated theology into the night with my brother priests.

Since 2003, in the United States, the last Sunday of October for us Catholics is known as Priesthood Sunday.

On this priesthood Sunday, we pray for priests. Because we need priests. Priests to baptize, priests to absolve our sins, priests to celebrate the Eucharist, priests to help hardened sinners return to Christ, priests to help families live the Gospel faithfully.  We will need priests until the end of time, to carry out the ordained ministry according to Christ’s plan for his Church.

A parish like this has many young men with so much potential. Men who could be doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, men who could have a pretty successful college sports career.  Young men who could be successful in the world of business or politics, and we hope many will be.  Because we need men of strong faith in the world. And we need men who will be strong leaders of faith in their families, strong faithful catholic husbands and fathers.

But the Church also needs men who will visit the dying, who will go where the bishop sends them to celebrate the sacraments, who will listen to sins of God’s people and tell them that they are forgiven. We need priests who will shepherd parishes with the heart of Christ the Good Shepherd and remind parishes that they are part of something bigger, a church that is led by bishops and popes, some of them saints, all of them sinners. We need priests to teach us that we are part of something ancient, a tradition where latin and Greek were spoken in catacombs, where Christians prepared for martyrdom at the hands of hostile governments. We need priests to help those doctors and lawyers and professionals to practice their professions in a manner consistent with the Gospel of Christ, and to assist, in fresh, new ways, our younger generations to encounter Christ--priests to help us see the goodness of God and the goodness in ourselves.


There are over 90 men in this diocese currently studying at our seminary here in Cleveland.  Men, who, like blind Bartimaeus in the Gospel today, have cried out to the Lord Jesus, “Master, I want to see.” I want to see how you are calling me to serve you. I want to see the places where you will lead me. I want to see how the priesthood can transform the world.

No doubt, each of us does well to make that same request to the Lord: “Master, I want to see” I want to see how you are at work in my life. I want to see how, even in the tragedies of life and the chaos of the world, you are there, bringing peace and order and justice. I want to see your light pierce through my darkness. Master, I want to see what I can do to follow you more faithfully, as a parent, as a single person, as a priest or religious.

[Holy Angels: In light of Fr. Ruggeri’s leave of absence and Fr. Bang’s reassignment, there’s need, isn’t there to the Lord to bring light to this particular period of darkness. “Master, I want to see” how you are preparing this parish for the next stage of its mission. I encourage you to pray for each other every day, to lift up each other’s needs to the Lord and to pray for Fr. Ruggeri, Fr. Bang, and for the bishop, that the Lord’s healing power may visit this place. For if the Lord can heal an old blind man, he can certainly bring healing to this place which is so full of life.]

We are reminded by our second reading from the letter to the Hebrews that priests aren’t perfect, they aren’t chosen from some special group of spiritual supermen. The Letter to the Hebrews says, the “priest is taken from among men” and made a representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness.” The Lord calls ordinary men to do extraordinary things. Ordinary men who are beset with weakness and temptation like any of us..

Now, certainly the holier the priest is the better. A priest dedicated to prayer, serving the Lord in humility and gentleness and patience and courage is to be preferred to a priest who doesn’t pray, who is arrogant and harsh and morally compromised. Yet, we commit to praying for all priests, that the Lord may use them, despite their weaknesses, to build up the Church, with patience, gentleness, humility, and courage.

May each of us do our part in fostering healthy, holy priestly vocations. We pray that our young men may have the courage to answer that call with generous hearts, that all of us will be generous in our support for such young men—and that all priests might be renewed and strengthened in holiness for the carrying out and preaching of the Gospel—that the good work God has begun in them, might be brought to fulfillment—for the glory of God and salvation of souls.