In our First Reading today, God calls on the prophet Jeremiah and sends him to tell the people of Israel to repent of their sins of idolatry and immorality and turn to God. The godless people do not want to hear the truth from God through Jeremiah, so they plot evil ways to get rid of him. Facing the opposition and the death threat against him, Jeremiah is tempted to keep quiet and let things be. Then God stirs up the fire of the Holy Spirit within his heart until he can no longer withhold the warnings of the Lord and continues to speak up on behalf of the Lord.

Let me begin by wishing all fathers a Happy Father’s Day! The Gospel reading this weekend is quite timely. It presents Jesus as a father. We are told that Jesus looked at the crowd coming to Him, and His heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” What an image that describes the situation of fatherhood in our society today. The joy of fatherhood is facing unprecedented challenges in our time. One can hardly talk about fathers these days without sounding “old fashioned” or off ending someone. We have seen, and studies have shown, that the absence of fathers, or father-figures, in a family has a signifi cant negative impact on the emotional, social, spiritual, and psychological development of many children leading to increasing stress, drug abuse, suicide ideation, and crime among young people. We have many young people in our society today who are like sheep without a shepherd.

The early summer liturgical “trifecta” of Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi that follows the celebration of the Easter Season and provides focus on the three fundamental realities of Christian life: the Church, The Triune Godhead, and the Holy Eucharist is completed this weekend with the celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the joyful celebration of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

The annual celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi gives us the opportunity to adore and expose the content of our belief in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the visible perpetuation of Christ’s presence in His Church. The Holy Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity, under the appearance of bread and wine.

The celebration of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church fifty days after Easter, is immediately followed by the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Thus, this weekend we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the liturgical feast that celebrates the central mystery of the Christian faith. This is the most singularly distinctive belief that separates Christianity from all other religions. For instance, Islam and Judaism hold firmly onto mono personal monotheism that does not admit the multiplicity of persons in the one true God. As a consequence, for strict adherents of Judaism, the doctrine of the Trinity is both erroneous and heretical, the same doctrine is judged extremely offensive to strict muslims.