Called to Evangelize

Jun 20, 2021 | Ministries

This month, families throughout the country will be celebrating Father’s Day.

For some men, this Father’s Day on June 20th will be especially joyful, marking the first celebration of their biological fatherhood. For other men, it might be especially nostalgic, anticipating their last such celebration this side of Heaven, joining next year so many other fathers already called home to the Father’s house–either long ago or recently. Of course, our national holiday with gifts, barbecues, and cards, aside, the Lord’s admonition to each of us to honor our father goes back nearly thirty-five hundred years, when God gifted us -through the Israelites–with the Fourth of His Ten Commandments.

Nevertheless, some “children” of any age find it hard to give honor to their biological fathers—whether absent or present; living or deceased–on Father’s Day or any other day of the year. If we are among those children, we need to remember Whose child we are first and foremost, and then turn to Him for healing help. Healing from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wrongs we have suffered; help to live the words of the “Our Father” and to forgive so that our own filial and parental sins will be forgiven.

As an act of humble trust to receive such healing and forgiveness, we turn to our spiritual priest-fathers in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Through their ministry, in our personal encounter with Jesus, we receive the freedom to know, love, and serve the best, most Providential Father who wishes to lavish His Unconditional Merciful Healing Love on us as if it were “our” day–“Children’s Day,” every day of the year! With new eyes of faith, and a renewed commitment to being apostles of Dramatic Missionary Growth, we can ask the Lord to show us how, despite fully knowing their nurturing shortcomings and faults, He used our biological fathers to provide us with the inherited DNA-related gifts and talents that we can use—and have used–in honoring the Blessed Trinity by rightly loving God and our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Then, even as we are journeying to fuller healing, by God’s Grace, through performing more generous
stewardship acts of Hospitality, Prayer, Formation and Service, we can make this Father’s Day, in the Year of St. Joseph, an exceptionally special day of honor for the fatherhood of our biological and spiritual role- model fathers. With great praise and thanksgiving, too, we can joyously spread the Good News of God’s Fatherhood to those hurting children of any age… Honor Your Father. Yes! Let’s give whole-hearted honor this June 20th—and every day—to the Infinitely Good Father Who deserves our total, unreserved filial love, respect, and obedience. With Him in mind, let’s enter into the spirit of Father’s Day with great peace and a new sense of our own dignity as one of His most beloved children.

For more info visit our website at https://www.stewardshipli.org
Copyright © Stewardship Long Island Embracing Dramatic Missionary Growth, 2021

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