God Never Stops Being Our Father

I preached the homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time this weekend (September 15-16) at the 4PM Saturday evening Mass and the 8:15 AM Sunday morning Mass here at Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Lexington KY, where I've been Parochial Vicar since the 5th of July. The readings for this Sunday are the following: Ex 32:7-11, 13-14; Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19; 1 Tim 1:12-17; Lk 15:1-32. What are in parentheses below are lines that I delivered spontaneously during the homily and only added afterwards to the original text.

Last Friday, I drove down Kingdom Come Parkway to attend a funeral for a Filipino doctor in Harlan, Kentucky. (Of course, I knew that Harlan is a fur piece from Lexington but I didn’t realize that I had to drive through Kingdom Come to get there.) At the funeral, several people gave eulogies in honor of Dr. Ocampo, among them this older gentleman who shared something that seemed to me really didn’t fit in his eulogy and it was also something that I found to be quite sad. For the sake of this story, let’s call this man 'Ron.'

This man shared that his son now calls him 'Ron' and not 'Dad,' because the son had told him that after his 18th birthday, his father’s work was done, his father no longer has any control or influence over him, he is now forever independent from his father. Thus, he feels no need to call his dad 'Dad;' he’s now just plain 'Ron.'

I don’t know about you, but, I thought to myself that they got it all wrong. At least from what I was taught as a child growing up, a father never stops being a father, a mother never ceases being a mother. A son or a daughter might stop being a son or a daughter to his or her parents, that is, he or she might stop being a child who respects and honors his or her parents, but a father is always a father, a mother is always a mother.

Then again, this just might be my so-called ‘backward-Third-World’ values talking. What do I know? I don’t have any kids of my own.

Still, this incident came to mind when I heard this Parable of the Prodigal Son, how in the parable the son decided to stop being a son to his father, how he was insistent on cutting his ties with his family, how he wanted to leave home with his share of the inheritance and to spend it every which way he wanted—every which way that brought shame and disgrace to himself, every which way that brought shame and disgrace to his father, every which way that brought shame and disgrace to his family name. The Prodigal Son stopped being his father’s son, and he himself admitted this when he said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.”

But here is the Good News: the father in the parable never stopped being a father. Despite the fact that his son has brought shame upon himself and to his name, despite the fact that he no longer deserved to be called his son, despite the fact that his son had rejected him, the father never stopped being a father to his son. He never stopped calling him his son. He never stopped forgiving his son. He never stopped loving his son. He never stopped loving his son because he knows that a parent’s love does not come with expiration dates.

But in our lives, in our society, in our day, we know that there are fathers who have forgotten how to be fathers and have left their families. We know that there are mothers who have forsaken being mothers and have allowed their unborn children to be killed. Yet, we hear the words of the Lord from the 49th chapter of Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her baby, or a woman the child within her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. See, I have carved your name on the palm of my hands.”

Indeed, even when we stop being God’s children, God never stops being our Father—just like that father in the parable: God never stops being God. Even when we forget God, God never forgets us. Even when we turn our back to God, God never turns His back on us. Even when we stop praying to God, God never stops calling us His children. Even when we sin and devote ourselves to the idols of our day, God never stops forgiving us. Even when we stop loving God, God never stops loving us.

(This past Tuesday, we marked the sixth anniversary of the tragedy of September 11. I remember how many in those days following 9-11 demanded, “Where was God?” And yet, at the 5:30 PM Mass last Tuesday, on the sixth anniversary of that tragedy, there were only six people at Mass. I was wondering whether God was going to ask back, “Where were you?” Where is God? God is always with us. Indeed, it is us who are not always with Him. We, just like that prodigal son, are the ones who often distance ourselves away from God. But, day in and day out, God is always with us.)

We might forget that. We might not even believe that. But that doesn’t change the fact that our names are carved on the palm of His hands. Our names are carved there by rusty nails driven through flesh because there is no pain, there is no suffering, there is no sin of ours that He would not bear, because there is nothing that would stop Him from loving us.