Homily: Father's Day

[00:00:01] Good morning. Welcome to St. Mike's. It's good to have you. Welcome. If I'm honest, I always get a little nervous with this gospel when Jesus said, all the hairs of your head are counted. Do you know the feeling, Deacon Steve? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wouldn't take the Lord too long for some of us.

[00:00:26] So Teddy Roosevelt was fond of saying this. He said, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. What does that mean? It means for those of us who are in leadership positions at work with our family in a parish.

[00:00:52] And the truth is, people really don't care how much you know. They don't care how many letters we have before or after our name. They don't really care. What they do care about is are you invested in their life? You know, since I've been a priest, I've never once had somebody say, Father, what was your grades in the seminary?

[00:01:15] Thankfully, no one has asked me that question. I'm very grateful. Okay? They just want to know, are you present? Are you present? Right? And it's the same with dads, right? Gentlemen, am I right? I mean, it's the same thing. Because some of us are physically present, but we're not emotionally or spiritually present, I think.

[00:01:37] In other words, we're physically there, but we're not emotionally engaged. And that's kind of what today is about, yeah? I mean, I think. I mean, as a dad, what we're trying to do is be emotionally present to the extent we can, give honor to our child's mother, even if we're not together with her anymore. That we're trying to be better listeners, and most importantly, we're trying to teach our kids something about God.

[00:02:05] Because here's the truth, brothers. When you and I teach our children to pray, you're teaching your grandchildren to pray. Because your grandchildren will learn about God from who? From your kids. That's how it works. Even if they grow up and they leave the faith for a while, they'll most likely come back. If for no other reason, they're going to remember their dad's example. That's how it works.

[00:02:34] Well, Father, what would you know? You're a celibate man. Okay. I got that. But what priests get is more of a bird's eye view of knowing thousands and thousands of families. And I'm telling you this, take it for what you want. It works. It does. Because kids never forget that dad's example of prayer. Maybe we can put it this way. Let's put it this way. Make it simple.

[00:03:00] We're all a work in progress, but our progress depends on our work. I mean, let's be honest. We're all kind of a work in progress. I know I am. But our progress is going to depend on our work. In other words, we have to put the effort into it, which means sometimes we have to make sacrifices for ourselves. Yeah? And God's going to meet us halfway. I promise He will.

[00:03:25] You know, in the Bible, we have plenty of examples of good dads and not-so-good dads. Let's talk about the not-so-good dads first. Saul. Saul was… he was a not-so-good dad. If you know anything about the book of Chronicles and Kings, we hear about Saul who was trying to kill his son, Jonathan, because he was friends with King David. And he was very, very threatened by King David.

[00:03:53] He's this young, attractive guy. He killed this Goliath guy. All these people are like, David! Right? And he's very threatened. He's very envious. So he tried to kill both of them. Never a good thing. Then we hear about Isaac and Jacob. Holy guys. Great guys. Their problems? They played favorites with their kids. This is my favorite. You, not so much.

[00:04:21] I mean, everybody here knows that's kind of the kiss of death as a parent. Maybe you've got one child who needs a little more attention and a little more TLC. This one's hyper-independent. That was me. And then we have these awesome examples. For instance, Job. If you've never read the book of Job, it is totally worth your time to read it. Job was like the Elon Musk of his day. I mean, he had everything.

[00:04:49] And then one day, the lights go out. Lost his flocks. Lost all the livestock. His house collapsed. A couple family members died. And to make matters worse, he had these huge boils on his body. And all of his friends were like, dude, what did you do to make God mad? Okay, that's the Tennessee translation. But you get the point. Okay. And he was like, you know what he says?

[00:05:19] The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So his kids see their dad's faithfulness. And on the other side of that, Job is given a hundred times more. He's rewarded with that. And now he's got gratitude. And then finally, we hear in Mark chapter 5, this beautiful example of a non-Christian,

[00:05:48] Jairus, who was a synagogue official. So his 14-year-old daughter just passed away. She died. And he runs to Jesus and he's like, I believe that you can do this. Now that's a big, big, big deal. Why? Because all of his colleagues were trying to kill Jesus. So this man breaks ranks with his colleagues, goes against the group think in the synagogue,

[00:06:17] and he goes to this itinerant guide, Jesus, and says, look, I believe you can do this. It took immense amount of humility and courage for him to do this. And Jesus rewards him. By the time he gets back home, she's up. Jesus said, give her something to eat. And we each decide, gentlemen, you and I are dads, biologically and spiritually,

[00:06:43] but I would argue those of us that are even biological dads are really spiritual dads too. Yeah? You know, I remember years ago, right after I got here at the parish, we had a seminarian who came and lived with us. And we were in the kitchen one day and we were just talking. And he said to me, he said, you know, Father, I'm going to be honest. I'm an introvert, and I hate standing in front of large groups.

[00:07:10] And I'm like, I said, dude, I hate to be Father Raincloud here, but you're kind of being doing this for a living, okay? And he turned white as a ghost, and that was the last we saw of that seminarian. I think I kind of scared him off, but better to know now, right? But point being is, we all, gentlemen, all of us, we make sacrifices, and we do things for our children, even if we don't want to do it.

[00:07:40] Even if we don't want to do it. We do it. So, play along with me here. I just want to share with you the story of a couple, okay? So, let's imagine that there's a couple, and they finally get a night free, where they don't have to be anywhere, okay? There's no soccer practice. Father Ben's not asking them to do anything. We got one whole night free. Well, let's stay in.

[00:08:10] So, they decide to stay in. So, man, he plops himself down on the couch, scrolling through Netflix, see what we can find. Out of the blue, his wife starts screaming in the kitchen. She's like, oh my gosh. So, he runs in the kitchen. Is there a rat? What's going on? And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And you can see smoke coming out of her ears. And she's pointing to the sink.

[00:08:36] She said, you said this morning that you would do the dishes from dinner last night. You always say you're going to do something that you never do. I have to ask you again and again and again. You always say this. You never follow through, ever. So, let's stop. Their beautiful evening is lost in 10 seconds. All right, now it's awkward. We're giving each other the silent treatment.

[00:09:07] Okay. What would be the right thing for this man to do? Wash the dishes. Eat humble pie. Now, in his defense, it never ends well in spousal arguments when somebody uses the word always and never. Okay. That does not end well at all. Because all we've done is just put them on the defensive. All right. But he needs to eat humble pie.

[00:09:32] And part of our life, in case you haven't noticed, gentlemen, as dads, is we have to pivot with what drops into our lap on a split-second moment's notice. All right? It is not uncommon for priests to have a night off. And I'm like, I'll sit in, ready to go to bed early, and I get a call to go to Le Bonheur. What am I going to say? No, I'm sorry. I'm watching Jason Bourne. No. I mean, I go.

[00:10:02] Because that's what my children need me to do. I go down there. And they will never forget that you came, and they will never forget you didn't. It's the same for us, brothers. So I'm going to close. I just want to tell you the story of a woman who I think underscores this message very well. Her name was Elizabeth Cone. Incredible woman. So she, in 1988, she lived in Houston, Texas.

[00:10:32] She was an attorney with two little boys, two and four years old. And in her own words, she was an atheist. She believed that when people die, lights out. That's it. Not a mess. And so on a very rainy night, they were having a funeral service for her deceased father at the local synagogue. So she gets her boys in the car. They go, they park right near the awning in the front door.

[00:11:00] She tells her two-year-old, run to the awning. I'll be there in a second. He does. She gets her other child out. And she's getting out of the car. She closes the door behind her, and she puts her child down. And she notices that her wedding ring was touching the metal bar on the umbrella. And at that very second, Elizabeth Cone was struck by lightning. And it killed her. It killed her.

[00:11:30] She was, they believed that her heart stopped beating for almost eight full minutes. Fortunately, there was a cardiologist at the synagogue that night who resuscitated her. But she said after she was struck by lightning, this is what she remembered first. She said that she was, I remember standing in the parking lot looking down at my body and the water.

[00:11:56] And she said, I remember being so upset because the shoes that I had bought for the occasion were destroyed. That's what she remembered. Elizabeth Cone, after that event, could not walk for three months. Her body was fine, but the bottom of her feet were fried from the lightning. She had to relearn how to walk. But I'm sharing this with you for this reason. When she went to heaven, this is a former atheist.

[00:12:26] When she went to heaven, she said she experienced tremendous and overwhelming sense of love, an unconditional love that she never thought was possible. And she also saw the ripple effects of parenthood. She saw multiple generations of people from her own family that had died.

[00:12:55] And she knew immediately who they were, even though she didn't know who they were. And she saw that that generation a hundred years ago impacted that generation, which impacted this one. That one impacted my grandparents and that one impacted my parents. And she came back with this overwhelming sense of God's love, but also of the magnitude, the magnitude of what we do and what we fail to do as parents.

[00:13:26] Tremendous responsibility. Trust me, I feel the same way. We're all a work in progress.