Father’s Day, among other things, is just around the corner and we’ll be celebrating fathers. Why not celebrate the only truly good father, God the Father? Among his countless attributes, we should consider him for his obedient son, Jesus Christ, the only perfect son. And why don’t we honor the Holy Trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with a month? Why honor ourselves, only, all the time, especially since we, on our own, have so pitifully little to be proud of – just look at us – and pride is the worst sin, and too often promoted to our detriment. Why not have a time to remember the good team, instead of the bad team, of this world, and educate the hell out of it?
We should educate the hell out of the world, that is, because it is full of death, deception and destruction.
In the eleventh chapter of Luke Jesus taught us about our relationship with God in his parable about a friend who asks a friend for food when a friend visits, unexpectantly, late at night. I think it’s fun to speculate who God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are in this parable. Like the principal characters in Leo Tolstoy’s Russian novel, “War and Peace” or the index of characters in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, “My Brilliant Friend” list the names of characters I’ll attempt to give new names to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit from this parable. First, Jesus says, outright, that we are the person that asks the friend for food. But the friend who has the food is God the Father because he’s the supplier of everything good. The food, interestingly enough, is Jesus, because Jesus as “our daily bread” is the spiritual bread of life and the Word of God we need to live and grow to be mature. The friend who visits, unexpectantly, late at night, requiring us to ask for food, I’d say, is the Holy Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, who enables us to get the perfect nourishment we need when we read the Bible, and without his help, we can’t understand anything. He enables us to see the light, which is Jesus, the light of the world.
What do people who are growing into adults do, in the world, in this, probably, the end of time? Jesus says, Luke 11:33, “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it into a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.” If we love our brothers and sisters we tell them about the only good and perfect Father and Son. And we let them hear about the Holy Spirit.
The rest of chapter eleven is about the evil father, Satan, and his divided kingdom, which is the world, his children, Jesus said. The world is divided, they are fighting all the time. But we don’t need to judge and condemn, instead, don’t we owe it to ourselves to have a day celebrating the good father, God the Father, for a change? Who has a good son, Jesus. And shouldn’t we have a month celebrating the Holy Trinity? Your answers to those questions say a lot in this, probably, the eleventh hour.