A homily-paper submitted in my God/Trinity class, intended to be delivered in the concluding mass of a father and son recollection-camp in Xavier School, in preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation to be received by second year high school students
The gospel reading in our mass today might be something that we have heard or encountered time and again in masses, prayers, and reflections. We hear Jesus in the gospel of Luke saying, “Ask and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Jesus continues by saying “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
This gospel passage has been often interpreted as a reminder for us to keep asking, begging, and believing in God’s providence – that He will continue to provide for us through the days and nights of our lives. This scripture passage is also often tied with our experience of prayer and how God answers our prayers, as the first few verses from the eleventh chapter of Luke’s gospel introduces the prayer that Jesus Himself taught to His disciples: the Lord’s Prayer. Today, though, let us look into this scriptural passage in the light of one of the cornerstones of our Catholic Christian faith: the Holy Trinity. We shall try to make sense on how the Trinity, this immense mystery that we profess and live as believers, can similarly mirror our experiences and realizations in our recollection-camp. Moreover, let us also try to look into how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit play an important part in your lives at present: for fathers who want to deepen further their relationships with their family especially their sons, and for sons who are preparing themselves to a more profound sense of Christian maturity through the Sacrament of Confirmation that you will be receiving in a month’s time.
The Trinity is one of, if not the least understood aspect of our Catholic Christian faith. In understanding the Trinity, we might have questions like, “How can there be three persons in one God? Does that mean that there are three Gods? Why can’t we simply believe and have one God? Why then should we believe in the Trinity? Whether there are three gods or just one God, in what way is such belief useful for our faith?” Proving the existence of three persons in one God has been the work of theologians and thinkers who have toiled to make sense of the mystery of the Trinity through the years. However, what interests us in our reflection today is how these three persons in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, can serve as a model of understanding our relationships with each other, especially as fathers and sons participating in this recollection-camp.
One of the definitions people often ascribe to when asked about God is the quotation “God is love.” True enough, God reveals Himself to us as love, as seen in the Bible and even in our personal lives. However, when we love, we express and offer our love through another: for fathers, it is a love directed to your wife, children, parents, friends, your work, and the like; and for sons, it is a love directed to your parents, your siblings, your friends, your studies, and so on. In the same sense, God shares His love to all of us, a love so perfect that our limited minds cannot totally encapsulate or comprehend. Out of this immense love for us, the Father sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, in order to reveal concretely such love to us, even to the point of accepting death on the cross for our salvation. However, such love is so great that He sent the Holy Spirit to continue revealing the love of God to us in our daily lives. In the Trinity, we see a common element that unites and makes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work in our lives: love. This relationship of love shared in the Trinity is the same love that is shared to us human persons, as reflected in our own experiences of love with others.
Jesus Christ, in his earthly life and ministry, manifested a special relationship with His Father in heaven. He even called Him “Abba”, a term of endearment just like “Papa” or “Daddy.” However, during His time, calling God as “Abba” was considered a scandal for the Jews, especially the elders who hold the Jewish law (the Torah) dearly. For them, God, whose being is utterly mysterious and totally “different” or “other” to them, cannot be simply called by just any name. But we hear Jesus invoking the name of God as His “Father” – a name that presupposes a close and intimate relationship of love.
In the animated movie Monsters Inc, Sulley, one of the film’s main characters, named the baby he encountered “Boo.” Upon learning this, Mike, his partner, reacted rather violently to Sulley’s naming of the baby. He said, “Once you name it, you start getting attached to it.” Such speaks of the power of names: when we know someone's name, we show a particular relationship or affinity with that person or even a power over that who is named. In this sense, by calling God as “Abba”, Jesus is showing us a new way of believing, understanding, knowing, relating, and being with God: as a father, a person intimately related to us, someone whom he hold unto dearly, a person who loves and we love. Let us then reflect on how this love is shared concretely in your experience as fathers and sons.
For the entire day, our dear fathers spent time with their sons, getting to know each other through various activities, exchanging stories and experiences with each other, and having perhaps a rare “quality time” with each other throughout this recollection-camp. Perhaps, for most of our students who have close ties with their dads, and this is just one of those usual times to be with each other and relish their relationship with each other. For some of them, however, this day marks the first time they truly had “bonding” moments with their fathers: of getting to know each other from one’s likes and dislikes, of expressing things that are not usually said in ordinary conversations, of just being with each other for an entire day doing fun and learning activities together.
This father and son recollection-camp is meant not only to give fathers an opportunity to get to know their sons better and vice-versa, but also to foster a deeper sense of appreciation, care, and love to each other. For the fathers, this activity is meant to enrich their relationship with their sons and create an avenue for mutual understanding. For the sons, this day serves as a chance to appreciate the person of their fathers, more than just as an adult male in the family but more importantly, as a guide and model of a mature and loving Catholic Christian.
The challenge of today’s gospel, the Church teaching on the Trinity, and our experiences in our father and son recollection-camp today is for fathers and sons to imitate and live out this perfect and immense love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day lives. By recognizing and accepting each other’s unique being, we come to know that relating with each other in this spirit of love is possible. This would hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of how we can be united in loving each other despite our own differences, and eventually to make this love unite not only fathers and sons but also the family as a whole.
I had my own experiences of being a son to my father. In more ways that one, my father and I had different interests and attitudes. My father plays golf while I play basketball. In front of the television, he would normally watch golf and movies, while I would more often than not have the screen stay in a channel showing basketball games. He drives quite carefully while I can be as reckless as a bus driver plying the roads of Metro Manila. He has a rather strong personality, while I’m the rather tame and patient one. If our meal orders for a restaurant were late, he would storm the counter and complain to the manager, while I would rather patiently wait in the table to avoid a possible commotion. We also had our own disagreements with each other in our beliefs and opinions. Yet despite these differences between us, what stood out in these experiences were the times we tried being open to understand each other.
When I was in grade school, he would bring me to the driving range to actually introduce me to golf. I gave it a try but I did not exactly like it. However, what struck me was the fact that he did not force me to learn the sport; rather, he respected my preference. The following week, he brought me to the CCP grounds, where we went biking, fishing, and sharing a picnic with each other. I appreciated how he tried to make time and opportunity for us to bond together as father and son. This experience made me appreciate the person and presence of my father in my life, as someone who understands and continues to love through it all.
Looking back, it made me become more open to him as I can share my stories and ideas to him, including the decision to enter the seminary. Every time we had misunderstandings or disagreements, this experience comes back to my memory. It taught me that despite our differences, we could actually come to a point of agreement, and on a more profound sense, a better level of understanding and care for each other. At present, even if I’m already 27 years old, I still look forward to bonding experiences with my father especially during family visits to the seminary. Moreover, the bonding we continue to share in a way also enriches the love we partake in the family despite our preoccupations, priorities, and busy schedules. The family visits through the years – from the minor seminary and even up to now – continue to be that common time for our family to talk, share stories and food, and be together as one family.
Let us learn from the example of the Trinity as a mirror of our relationships in the family, specifically your relationship as father and son. The life and action of the Trinity may serve as an inspiration among fathers and their sons, and perhaps the entire family, in establishing and maintaining a healthy family life. It is our hope that this recollection-camp would foster and nurture a more profound sense of understanding, a more intimate room of caring, a more dynamic way of communion between father and son. There could be differences between each other in terms of interests and likes, opinions and beliefs, dreams and hopes, but such makes relationship and openness to each other possible.
The activities that you have engaged and shared with one another throughout this day would hopefully bring forth further activities not only of bonding but of loving and appreciating – father to son, and son to father. This is precisely the life and work of the Trinity as dialogue in action: the relation of the three persons in one God becomes the model and goal of our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. The activities you shared with each other would hopefully pave the way for opportunities to get to know each other outside and beyond this recollection-camp. And this intimate relationship between father and son would also enrich the life of the entire family as the spirits of openness, communication, fidelity, support, dialogue, respect, and trust prevail between husband and wife, father and children, mother and children, and each member in relation to the entire family.
Moreover, the love and support that are shared and communicated in your respective families would hopefully serve as the “wind” in the “fire”, strengthening and encouraging your respective sons as they take another step in their journey of maturity into better and more responsible Catholic Christians. We pray for our students, the sons who participated in this recollection-camp in preparation for your Confirmation in a month’s time, that as they receive this sacrament of Christian maturity the Holy Spirit would give them the strength and courage to be more Christ-like and to be witnesses and co-workers of Christ in the world. It is our hope that you in return, living by the love and unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and animated by the example of Saint Francis Xavier, would be the salt of the earth and the light of the world as men fully alive, endowed with a passion for justice and the skills for development. Amen.
deo gratias.
thanks to vea for proofreading this homily-paper :)
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