ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - JUNE 16, 2024

ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

On this Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, we also celebrate Father’s Day, which is essentially a celebration of the unique relationship between a father and his children. As Catholics, we look upon the Church as our Mother; our daily expression of our individual spirituality is fostered by the feminine and motherly qualities of a loving Church community. This is also why Christ and his Church has so elevated his own mother Mary to be uniquely venerated among the faithful. But our interaction with the fatherly side of our spirituality is encountered directly in our personal relationship with God - the Father sending His Son through a corporeal body, so that the providing and giving nature of God the Father is received as someone real.

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READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

Every father who sacrifices his own livelihood for the sake of raising his children reflects the Divine Fatherhood of God in Heaven. The ultimate act of love from God for us was giving up His own life on the cross, but this was precipitated by the Father giving over His Son long before His Son went to His death. The most beautiful expression of fatherhood is when his energy, ego, pride, and focus shifts from himself onto his child. One can only beam when they see a father jump for joy at his child’s first steps, his son’s first hit in baseball, or his daughter’s first dance recital. These little moments of utter delight are not a celebration of a father’s own accomplishments, but the accomplishments of his own children, entirely unique and separate individuals from him. This strange celebration of someone else’s success rather than your own is simultaneously a consequence of sin and the corruption of death, as well as a reflection of Divine Love. As he gets older, a father becomes less equipped to achieve the physical accomplishments that his children are able to. Our bodies begin to age, our youthfulness erodes, our energy depletes, and we constantly get closer to the death that awaits every single one of us. But through his child, a father lives on. The effects of his decision-making and his method of raising and preparing his children for life begin to manifest in who the child grows up to be or what they grow up to do. Death, the consequence of Original Sin that awaits us all, necessitates a father to live on through his offspring, but God has transformed the consequence of our sin to also be a perfect reflection of the love that exists within Him and the Trinity. When a father celebrates his child, he rejoices in the growth that his child has achieved as they get closer to being sent out into the world. A father rejoices in the fact that his child is all the more prepared to succeed as he sends them out. When the Father sent the Son from Heaven in the person of Jesus Christ, He must have beamed with delight at how perfectly prepared His Son was in being sent. He would have been all the more delighted that His Son offered Himself to the World, reflecting the sacrificial nature of love found in the Trinity.

One does not need to be a father in order to express this sacrificial love of sending out. Love, and evangelization as a reflection of love, expects no celebration or payment in return for what is given. To love and to evangelize is to sow seeds that we, as evangelists or parents, may never see. Fathers may never get to see their children grow or be sent into the world. Evangelists may never see the recipients of their preaching convert to the faith. However, like Christ mentions in the Gospel, we are planting small seeds not for the sake of harvesting the fruits, but so that what is to bloom in the future may be celebrated and harvested by those who need it most. This is the essence of a fatherly, sacrificial, and divine love.