True lives

This is my homily for the weekend that just ended, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C.  The readings for the weekend are here.

Happy Father’s Day, dads, grandpas, godfathers, priests and all the other kinds of dads who may be with us this morning.

Jesus tells us today that the Spirit of truth will guide us to all truth.

That word “truth” is interesting.  Of course, it usually is used in reference to what is factually true or scientifically true – and it’s important, in this day and age, when so many falsehoods swirl around us, that we stand for what is factually and scientifically true.  But “true” can have broader meanings as well.  For example, if I shoot an arrow with a bow, and it lands in the bullseye, we say that the flight of the arrow was true.  Or if a craftsman cuts a piece of wood that is exactly to measurement, we say that his cut was true.

I have a theory about dads, about how we’re called to live our lives.  This is the theory: we dads should live lives of truth, not lives of falsehood.  And in this case, I mean that word “truth” in its broad sense.  A life lived in truth is a life of wholeness, a life of integrity.  Ultimately, it’s rooted in our having life in the Holy Trinity: in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To help us live a life of truth, Jesus gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. 

To help illustrate what living a life of truth looks and feels like, let me contrast it with living a life of falsehood.  What does a life of falsehood look like?  It can look many different ways, because there are many ways we can rebel against God, and fight against the promptings of the Spirit.  But for many men, a life of falsehood is a life of infidelity.  But infidelity isn’t the only way that we husbands and fathers can live a life of falsehood.  In my case, living a life of falsehood meant living of a life of selfishness, and laziness, a life in which I lived for the moment and pursued short-term pleasures – I wanted a party every day.  It was a life in which I didn’t plan for the future.  When I was living a life of falsehood, I didn’t live for anyone other than myself.  It was a life in which I didn’t develop myself to my potential, physically, mentally, spiritually.  It wasn’t a criminal life, or an especially unfaithful life, but it wasn’t a life of wholeness and integrity, either.

So what changed for me?  Well, I guess the root cause, as we say in the business world, is that God went to work on me.  The way God did that was by having Therese come into my life.  Marriage made me a better person.  There is a common belief that you can’t change your spouse.  It may be true that we can’t change one another, but don’t believe for a moment that God can’t change us, for the better.  Because He can.  All we have to do is get out of the way and let him get on with it.  And in my case, it’s definitely helped me to have Therese loving and supporting me – and, on occasion, offering me a gentle corrective.

When our children come along, we dads are called to embrace a life of truth and integrity as fathers – living for our children, sacrificing for them, serving them, and keeping the promises we made at their baptisms to teach them about God, and helping them cultivate habits of discipleship, like praying and going to mass.

We dads know that it’s not easy to live lives of truth and integrity.  When I was a child growing up in Michigan, my brother Bob, who was even younger than me, contracted cancer.  He was in a children’s hospital in Chicago for several months.  My parents left us behind for days at a time, hiring babysitters to get us to school and keep the household running, while they stayed with my brother in the hospital.   My parents weren’t sure whether Bobby was going to make it or not.  But they didn’t share the full seriousness of his situation with us kids.  They thought it was better to shield us from it, rather than tell us the unvarnished truth.  Was that the right thing for my parents to do?  I’m still not certain.  It’s not always easy for dads and moms to discern what to do.  It seems that sometimes, living lives of truth and integrity may actually mean withholding the truth from people who may not be able to accept it.  Even Jesus referred to something similar in our Gospel reading today, when he said, "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now."

Many of us dads (and moms) find ourselves in situations in the workplace that challenge our ability to live lives of truth and integrity.  Most of us aren’t our own masters in the workplace – we have one or more bosses, who sometimes expect us to do things that make us uncomfortable, or that we know are wrong.  There was a time when we were launching a new product that would have made us a direct competitor of another company.  That company didn’t know we were getting ready to launch this product, and they happened to approach us, innocently, on a sales call to try to sell us the very product that we’d soon be competing against.  My bosses thought that this was a great opportunity: we could pretend to be interested in buying the other company’s product, in the course of which we’d pump them for all sorts of details about their product.  We could gather a trove of competitive intelligence that otherwise would be very difficult to get.  I sat through an introductory conference call in which my bosses untruthfully professed interest in buying this other product.  The other company revealed many things to us about their product that they would never reveal to a competitor.  As the call went on, I got more and more uncomfortable with our operating under false pretenses.  After the call ended, I told my bosses that I didn’t think we were behaving appropriately.  I told them I wouldn’t be part of any conversations with that competitor anymore, and I urged our company to break off further contact with our future competitor.  In reciting this history here, I'm sure I come across as rather self-righteous; but in fact, I was shaking in my boots.  I needed that job.  I didn’t get fired; in fact I think they were grateful that someone was willing to be the voice of conscience.  In retrospect, there may have been something dysfunctional about the corporate culture in that company such that once this unethical idea was proposed, nobody could speak up against it without losing face.  I felt I was taking a risk in speaking up. And I recognize that the outcome isn’t always as good in the workplace as it was for me that time.  When a dad, or mom, is put in a difficult moral position at work, it’s very hard, because most of us need our jobs to support our families.  We don’t want to stick our necks out if that means risking our livelihoods.  We should all pray for dads and moms who struggle with ethical issues in the workplace.

When we dads are living lives of truth and integrity, we know it right here.  There is a feeling of peace that comes to us when we align ourselves with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  On the other hand, when we’ve living lives of falsehood, we’re often at war, with others and with our own consciences.  We’re not at peace.  We’re unhappy.  Deep down, we feel empty, unsatisfied, unfulfilled.  At least that’s been my experience.

Dads, on this Father’s Day, let our prayer be that we can enjoy the peace that comes from allowing the Spirit of truth to conform us to life in the Holy Trinity.  Let us strive to cast off the accoutrements of living a life of falsehood, and instead try to live lives of integrity and wholeness.  May the Spirit of truth teach us to live lives of Truth.