(Twelfth Sunday of the Year (B):
This homily was given on June 21, 2015 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly,
R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Job
38: 1-11; 2 Corinthians 5: 14-17; Mark 4: 35-41.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twelfth Sunday of the Year 2015]
What messages does
the Lord have in these readings for fathers?
When I prepare my homily for Father’s Day weekend each year, that’s the
question I always reflect on.
For reasons that should be obvious.
Now I will admit that when I did that this past week in preparation for
this Sunday’s Liturgies, my first reaction was to think, “Gee, there’s not much
here.”
Which is ALWAYS the wrong reaction to have when it comes to the Word of
God!
That’s because God ALWAYS speaks to us whenever the Scriptures are
proclaimed at Mass (or whenever we read them in private, for that matter!).
The problem is that our “spiritual ears” aren’t always open—as mine weren’t
open the other day, at least initially.
But after I spent a little time with the three passages—reflecting on
them, thinking about them and praying over them—I came to realize the Lord actually
has a number of important things to say to fathers through these texts.
(And that includes spiritual
fathers as well as natural fathers.)
Take, for example, that first reading from the book of Job. Most of us know at least the basic outline of
Job’s story. He was a good man—a very
good man—who had one really bad day: a day on which he lost all his animals (they
were either stolen or killed); all his children (they died when the house they
were in collapsed during a terrible windstorm); and his health (he was
afflicted with a horrible skin disease in which painful boils appeared all over
his body).
And he knew he hadn’t done anything seriously wrong!
Three of his friends proceed to drop by and give him some terrible
counsel, telling him that he must have done something to bring this evil on
himself, and that he’ll figure out what it is if he thinks long and hard enough.
But Job continues to assert his innocence.
In the midst his pain and frustration, he eventually cries out to God,
demanding to know why he’s been allowed to suffer all these things, and in
chapter 38 (which is where today’s first reading is from) God gives him an
answer—although it’s not the answer Job is looking for.
The answer goes on for a number of chapters, and in it God basically
says to Job, “Who are you, little man, and what do you know? Don’t you realize that there are some things
in this life that you will never fully understand?—because you don’t have the
capacity, with your finite human mind, to fully understand them.”
What an important lesson for fathers to teach their children! I was speaking to Fr. Michael Sisco this
week, and he told me about a funeral Mass he had said the previous Saturday for
an 18-year-old girl from his parish who had died suddenly and
unexpectedly—while exercising! She was a
former altar server of his who was known as a really nice girl—a girl who
donated her time to a number of local, charitable causes. And her death remains a mystery because the medical
examiner couldn’t find a reason why she collapsed and died the way she did.
How do you make sense of something like this when it happens?
The answer is, you don’t! And
young people need to know that! They
need to be taught by their fathers—and mothers—that some things in this life
are mysteries and will always remain mysteries.
At least on this side of the grave.
But we can know all that we NEED to know! We can know all that we need to know in order
to attain the ultimate goal of this earthly life—which is, of course, eternal
salvation. This is also something every
father needs to teach his children, lest they lose their way and despair in the
midst of all the tragic things that they will not be able to understand. That’s
why our second reading from 2 Corinthians is so appropriate for Father’s Day:
because it reminds fathers (and the rest of us) of the core of the Gospel
message, namely, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Fathers, how often do you talk to your children about Jesus, and about the
truths of our Catholic faith—truths that will help them to navigate their way
through this sometimes difficult and very confusing life? They need you to do that!
And there’s another message for dads in that reading. It comes specifically in these lines: “[Jesus]
indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
“So that they [your children] might live for him.” Not for you,
dad—or for you, mom—but for him: for
Jesus Christ. Your role as Christian
parents is to help your children to know the Lord and love the Lord and serve
the Lord, and to encourage them to do what GOD wants them to do in their
lives—not what you as parents want them to do.
What you want them to do with their lives and what God wants them to do might
be the same thing, but it might not
be the same thing.
And in the latter instance a good Christian father needs to yield to
the heavenly Father—always!
This truth, by the way, applies to spiritual fathers as much as it
applies to natural ones. You know, because
we’ve had so many vocations to the priesthood and religious life from our
parish and community in recent years, there are some who think that I put
pressure on young people to enter the seminary and the convent. But I don’t!
I simply tell young people that they need to prayerfully discern what God wants them to do with their lives,
and then follow THAT plan.
Because what matters most in this life is discovering and carrying out
the will of the Lord, not the will of Fr. Ray (or any other human person).
All that I’ve said so far is, in a certain sense, summed up in this
gospel story of Jesus and the apostles on the Sea of Galilee. The message here for dads is: Make sure Jesus
Christ is in your “boat”, and then do your best—your very best—to get him into
the “boats” of your children. It says in
this text that the apostles “took Jesus with them in the boat”. Had they not done that—and had they not cried
out to Jesus in their distress—they might have died in the storm that night.
We take Jesus into our “boat”—that is to say, our life—(and we keep him there) when we build a strong personal
relationship with him that’s rooted in baptism, and nurtured by prayer and the
sacraments. And if we ever make the
mistake of throwing Jesus “overboard” (so to speak) by committing a serious
sin, we can always get him back in our boat by repenting and getting to
confession.
Dads, are you doing these things in your own personal lives? Do your children ever see you pray? Do you
lead them in prayer by bringing them to Mass EVERY weekend? Do you lead them in prayer by saying grace
before meals? Do you set an example for
them by getting to confession regularly—even if you don’t have a serious sin on
your soul?
If they can see that Jesus Christ is truly present in your boat; in other words, if they can see
that you are building a strong personal relationship with Jesus Christ in your
life—a relationship through which you are finding the strength you need to face
the storms of your life—chances are they will follow your example.
Which will make all the difference in the world in terms of how successfully
they deal with the trials, the difficulties—the storms—of their lives.
I’d like to end my homily now by first apologizing to the Lord for
thinking that he hadn’t provided any messages for dads today in these three
Scripture readings (I should know better!); and then by asking him to bless all
the fathers here present by giving us the grace that we need to live these
messages faithfully.
And I ask all of you who are not fathers to join me in making this
request, because if we dads actually do live these messages faithfully, you—and
especially you young people—will be the primary beneficiaries.