There are a few sentences in the text below that are between square brackets. I gave this homily twice today. The first time, I included the portion between the brackets, but I noticed that people's attention started to wander. It was too complicated for people to follow. So I cut it out the second time.
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Happy Father’s
Day, dads. And I guess we should
acknowledge the moms and kids, too – as someone once pointed out, we couldn’t
have been dads without you.
We parents tend
to measure the progress of our children in milestones. Our family hit a couple of milestones
recently: one of my children graduated from college this past spring; and
then, just within this past week, she got a job. It’s all a big deal for her, but it’s a big
deal for us parents, too. When our children
cross from one major stage of life to the next like that, it makes us parents feel
like maybe we actually got something right.
Like maybe amid the daily chaos of our household there is a plan to all this, and we were able to fulfill it
in some small way.
Like the
mustard seed in today’s Gospel, my daughter was very small once. As a matter of fact: I happened to be present
at the births of all four of our children, and hers was in some ways the
scariest one – she had to be helped along out into the daylight with this
vacuum-attachment-like thing that they attached to her head, and then the doctors
and nurses had to work on her for a while to get her breathing on her own. For a little while there in the hospital room,
I wasn’t sure she was going stick around with us. But she did, and now she’s this beautiful and
educated and professional young woman. The
little mustard seed has sprouted and grown and blossomed.
When we
parents look back on our family’s life, those big milestones like graduations
and first jobs are the things that our memory’s eye is naturally drawn to, but
most of our lives don’t consist of big milestones. For most of our days, nothing particularly
large or grandiose is scheduled. Most of
our lives are the seemingly little things that come before or after the big
milestones. Little days, strung together like beads on a
rosary, that add up to decades.
Sometimes we
may even get bored or irritated with the smallness, the sameness, the habitualness
and humdrumness of our lives. Maybe that’s
one of the reasons that so many distractions are on offer to us – television and
Facebook and other techie entertainment devices; maybe it’s one of the reasons
that addiction is so prevalent in our society.
For many of us dads, it’s our work, our jobs that compete with what’s
truly important: our children and families.
If a dad is determined to not focus on his children, our culture provide
the alternatives.
Dads, if I
could give you some advice on this Father’s Day, it would be: don’t ignore the
little days. There are so many of them
that taking the little days for granted is a temptation – but resist that
temptation. Savor your time with your
children. Lean into their lives. Listen to them. Take an interest in their lives. Support them. And always – always – love them.
When I look at how quickly my children have
grown from tiny little mustard seeds into fully grown plants, it seems to me
that time has flown by. By contrast, my
own childhood seemed to have poked along like a milk wagon, but the days of
parenthood rush past like an express train.
I often say
that the two happiest days of my life are the day I got married, and the day I
was ordained as a deacon. Those were big
milestone days for me, and they truly were joyful days. But the key days, the days that truly changed
my life, were not those big milestone days, but rather the days on which I took
the first steps on the journeys that eventually led to a wedding, to an
ordination. To get to a wedding day, or
an ordination day, or a graduation day, or a first job offer – none of those
happen without a journey of many days leading up to the milestone. The day that truly changed my life was the
day I struck up a conversation with the alto in the college choir,
Therese, who one day would be my wife. When
that day dawned, I didn’t know it would be a day that was going to change my
life. It felt like just another day of school and
work – a rather average, humdrum day.
But it turned out that it was a day that a little mustard seed was
planted: from it, a relationship sprouted. Likewise, the day that began my
journey to become a deacon was a typical work day. But that was the day that Fr. Hurley happened
to call me on the phone and ask me to prayerfully consider the diaconate. That simple phone call was a little mustard
seed.
All of our
days are filled with meaning and importance – even the little-bead days when we dads
and moms might be tempted to take our children for granted and focus on other,
less important items. All our days are
important because all of them are days that our family lives out its life under
God’s watchful care. [St. Paul is so
right when he urges us in today’s 2nd reading to aspire to please
God, whether we are home or away. By “home”
he doesn’t mean the houses or apartments where we live, but rather our true
home, in heaven; and by “away”, he means here in our mortal lives on earth. Home or away, we aspire to please God. None of us is home yet. We’re all “away” for now. We’re expatriates, we’re travelers who are journeying
in this earthly life for a while. But here
in our exile, from afar, we aspire to please our God in heaven. In his letter to the Romans, Paul expands on
this notion of being home vs. being away – he writes, “None of us lives for
oneself, and no one dies for oneself.
For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the
Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:
7-8). We are always the Lord, every
day, even on the humdrum, average days.]
Dads, let me
try to boil this down to the basics: being a parent is more than just something
we do: it’s the sacred vocation of our lives, the great task to which God has
called us. It is God’s plan for us. So while we journey here on earth, we dads serve
God by caring for our children. Dads,
let us prioritize our lives in alignment with this sacred vocation. Let the well-being of our children and our
families come first: before our careers, and before our own leisure and
entertainment and pursuit of pleasures. Every day with our
children is a new opportunity to do God’s work.
Let us lean into our children: by
spending time with them, listening to them, helping them, dispensing wisdom to
them, and most of all by loving them.
And as our children grow like mustard seeds, from very small to fully
grown and independent adults, let our prayer be that we can look back someday on
these years that fly by all too quickly, when our children are growing up - grant
us the grace, Lord, to be able to look back on these years, not with regret
about what we should have done but didn’t, but rather with God’s praise ringing
in our ears: “Well done, dads, my good and faithful servants.”
Great homily! I like how you linked children and mustard seeds, and Fathers Day.
ReplyDeleteOur deacon was trying to make a very muddled point about how the mustard seed grows into a tree and a home for the birds, just as God's kingdom expands like kudzu to choke off everything else. Except without the catastrophic consequences. He had to do some back pedalling.
I wish deacons had to take at least two years of training in literary composition before they were allowed to give homilies.
Jean, many thanks for your support - I take encouragement from it.
DeleteYes, it's an interesting point about literary composition. FWIW, nearly all of the homiletics training my class received during formation was composition-oriented: How To Prepare A Homily. And very little on how to actually deliver a homily, i.e. the communication and public-speaking aspects, which are also very important and another area in which many of us deacons also are pretty deficient :-(.
One priest friend told me that his class was trained not to do careful composition ahead of time, but to preach extemporaneously and trust the Holy Spirit to give them the words. The idea was that priests often are called upon to preach without any time for preparation, so they need to cultivate the ability to preach without prep. I do understand the part about not having time to prepare: priests have to preach a lot (e.g. they may offer short homilies at daily mass, they do a ton of funerals where they hadn't known the deceased, etc.) - they preach much more than most deacons do. But for all that, priests generally are better preachers than deacons. Priests also have received a lot more training than deacons, both in homiletics and in scripture studies.
And frankly, a lot of us deacons are retired and *should* have time for ample preparation and rehearsal.
I think we need to find a supportive and constructive way to raise the bar for deacons and preaching.
Sorry, I know all this is probably not an area of high interest, but it's something that bugs me.
In our formation classes someone had to give a homily on that Sunday's readings every single session. There was a rotation list, and you didn't get to pick your time (but you did know ahead of time so as to be able to prepare). Was good practice for them. The whole class, wives included, filled out a critique sheet afterwards. You were supposed to be kind but honest.
DeleteThen for awhile after ordination, my husband had a spiritual director who was a bit Charismatic. His philosophy was that one should just get up to homilize and roll with whatever the Spirit gave you. So after a few times of that, the pastor (who wasn't the spiritual director) took D.H. aside and said, "You really need to have some notes. It keeps you from being too lengthy, and keeps you from wandering all over the place. And did I mention that you really need to watch the length?"
Oh, of high interest to me.
DeleteIf you can't break the Word properly, how do you expect people to approach the Broken Body with any understanding of what it is they're doing?
My cousin, a Presbyterian minister who offered to do Mom's commital service, and I talked about this a lot on the long ride up north to the cemetery and back. It was an interesting glimpse into the challenge of finding the right words without relying on cliches.
Father has a knack for giving a nice little two-minute sermon, often with a memorable anecdote. He knows his audience. The deacon, I think, is overworked.
God save me from extempore preaching and praying. In Raber's family, only men are allowed to pray aloud unless there are only women present (though there may be some rule about having to at least find some man first). And "written prayers" are considered Romish. So they go on and on because the pray-er likes to hear his head roar.
DeleteGood one, Jim. I especially liked the part about the little days being so important. Sometimes we don't reflect on how most of the time our lives are made up of "ordinary time", and that is a gift of God where He works out our salvation.
ReplyDeleteNice, Jim. Our three male mustard seeds are all over 6 feet, but when one started going bald all three began shaving their heads. So there is no place for the birds to nest.
ReplyDeleteThe night I met my wife I was in unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. It was raining in Milwaukee. I knew at the time it was going to be memorable.
Our deacons had to preach on Father's Day, too. That practice sort of undercuts all the arguments that celibates can know enough about sex to write theologies of the body, ainna?
"The night I met my wife I was in unlawful flight to avoid prosecution." Tom, I really think we need to hear the rest of that story.
DeleteYes! I hope that story doesn't languish in your desk drawer like your novel!
DeleteTom you can't just tease us like that and not tell us the story! Unless the statute of limitations hasn't expired yet ...
DeleteYeah I thought that would get your attention.
DeleteIt was a dark and stormy night. The Engineering school at Marquette was throwing a mixer for all the nursing schools in the area at the North Avenue Auditorium. For some reason, the engineers hired my buddy and I to entertain when the band took the break, me on banjo and him on harmonica and vocals. We were freshmen at the time. So we did our thing at the break.
The ballroom was on the second floor. On the first floor there was a bowling alley with a bar attached. Being thirsty (though underage) John and I repaired to the end of the bar and ordered beers. Through the outer door, and starting at the other end of the bar, came come cops checking ID. Before they got to us, John and I beat it up the back stairs and danced with the first two girls we saw. Mine was a red head who liked dark and stormy nights. And somehow I knew, I knew even then that somewhere I'd see her again and again.
That's great!
DeleteWow! And you accomplished the matchup of your life without a computer dating service? You still needed an engineering department, though.
DeleteMaybe that's why I was such a non-starter with the ladies all during college ... Loyola didn't have an engineering department.
DeleteTom, what an enchanted evening that must have been.
DeleteWonder how the denizens of the engineering department did? Probably not as well as Tom.
ReplyDelete