My dearest sons and daughters, 
   On this solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, when we celebrate God the Father of 
whom all is, through and for God the Son, the Word incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ; in God the 
Holy Spirit; May I wish you a very happy Father’s Day to all of our Fathers, Grandfathers and 
Godfathers, especially to our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV, on this first father’s day!
   We still call our priests “father.” Dare I call you “children?” Priests used to address their Sunday congregations as “my dearest sons and daughters;” now priests less confidently say only “my brothers and sisters.” and some say: “my dear friends” adding ...in Christ! -Sometimes. At some point in our lives, we priests must begin calling our parish family “my beloved children” without embarrassment. An “elder” can call another man’s son or daughter “his” child, but the tricky thing is that even a 25-year-old man, once ordained, is an “elder” (presbyter in Greek, meaning “old man”). At 49, I feel significantly closer to “elder status” than I did at 32 when I entered seminary or at 37 when I was ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Still, spiritual fatherhood is such a wonderful grace that I can scarcely believe in it. But believe in it, I do. May God supply what I lack, that I may be a good father to my parish family. 
   We pray for all our fathers this entire month of June, the month also of the Sacred Heart. It’s not easy being a father these days, but we men have only to turn daily to God the Father to know how we can provide, protect, and procreate those entrusted to us by Him. 
   The human person—you and I—are essentially wired for relationship, to live in community with others. We need to be close to at least some other persons, because the fundamental template of the universe is a relationship between three persons, Father Son and Holy Spirit. In a godly relationship of love, no one owns anything exclusively but shares even his own person with the beloved. He knows the joy of trusting the one who loves him or her. The Father trusts everything he is and has to the Son, who trusts his father in the Holy Spirit, as he said with his last breath on the cross: “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.” So Our Lord says from the farewell discourses in John 16: “Everything that the father has is mine…” The Spirit too, has no identity apart from the Father and the Son, as Our Lord says in the same passage: “The spirit of truth will not speak on his own, but will speak what he hears.” 
   God is one, but God is never isolated: he is essentially a communion of persons. And each of us is one, an “individual,” but we never need be isolated, because God invites us into communion within Himself, especially when we receive “Holy Communion.” We come together each Sunday to become one Body by receiving the Body of Christ. Let us pray for all the lonely people, and may we be a Sacrament to them of God’s sacred communion.