Father’s Day – Trinity Sunday

This year, the Father’s Day is also the Sunday of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. I do not think it is a mere coincidence. Rather, it is God’s providence to reminds us of His love and mercy. In fact, these are the theme for the Trinity Sunday scripture readings – Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13;11-13; John 3:16-18. The Gospel reading (John 3:16-18) is quite powerful in expressing the immeasurable love of the Father in heaven, who gave His only begotten Son, out of His love – to save us. And, the Son asked the Father to send us the Holy Spirit (John 14:16).

In celebrating the Most Holy Trinity on this Father’s day, it is meaningful to see how the ineffable mystery of Trinity can be related to fathers of our own in our respective families on earth. This way, we can honor our fathers, alive or deceased, physically present or present in spirit, in light of  honoring  our Father in heaven through the most holy Trinity.

So, what is your image of a typical father?

My image for this, in fact, remembering my father as a hard working provider. When he was alive, he worked many hours for his family.

I grew up rather in a traditional Japanese family, where a father goes out for work as a bread winner to provide for the family, and a mother works in and around the home as a producer to turn what the father provided for the family into something that meets the needs of my sister and me at a time.

My father worked as a journalist. He knew how to take a scoop and write for the front page cover article. And, he was good. So, I am very proud of him. And, he earned good form his dedicated work in journalism. But, he did not know how to turn what he earned into something we can eat. So, that was taken care by my mother in the kitchen, after she went grocery shopping.

There is a difference between the way the father shows his love and the mother shows her love.

So, in my family, the father was always a provider, while the mother was a producer.

To put my family’s reality in a more general context to connect to the concept of Trinity, I can say that the father in the family is the bread winner. It does not necessarily mean that he always buys bread for his family. But, he is the primary provider for his family to keep bread on the table. Without my father’s role as the primary bread winner, it would be difficult for my mother to produce enough bread to feed the family.

It is the mother who bakes bread for the family, using the ingredients she purchased with what the father has earned.

Now, as the Gospel reading for the next Sunday, the Corpus Christi Sunday (John 6:51-58), tells, Jesus is the bread of life (John 6:51).

So, just like the Father in Trinity provides  with the Son, the first parakletos, the parakletos in sarx, who is the living bread of life (John 6:51), the father in an earthly family also provides bread for his family. As the Son, the bread of life, came to us through Theotokos, Mary, the Mother of God, the mother of Jesus, the bread that the father earned comes to the family table through the hands of the mother of the family.

In Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the second parakletos, the parakletos in pneuma, is also what the Father provides. So, what is the equivalent to the Holy Spirit in the ordinary earthly family context?

Because the Holy Spirit is something that has no shape but present everywhere, it is like a peculiar atmosphere of the family that the father casts.

To me, that’s the air of my family, which my father radiates. In the Japanese culture, which Edward Hall regarded as “high context culture”, which means relying more on the context rather than verbal means, the authentic air that father in the family radiates is something you just don’t want to mess with. If you did, you sure would be sorry.

The air the father cast in the family is what keeps the family in unity and in order. This is like the air of the authority that presence of the military commander brings to his unit.

My father did not speak to send his message to my sister and me, when we were growing up.  We had to be smart enough to read the air and behave.

In a way, the air the father cast in my family was like the Ten Commandments.  But, it was not take fun out of my sister’s life and mine but to keep us safe from troubles. It was out of my father’s love for my sister and me to keep us on the right path, when we were growing up. So, the air sent out of my father, filling my family, was like the Holy Spirit that touches and guides us, sent from the Father in heaven, as promised by Jesus when he was talking about his Ascension during the Last Supper.

Now, my father is gone.  His physical presence has been gone. His physical remains have been reduced to just enough cremated bone fragments to fill a small urn. But, the father’s air continues to be with my mother, my sister, and me. Sometimes I feel the smoke in the air, the very smoke my father used to enjoy while he was present in his flesh.

Likewise, the Holy Spirit is always with us, transcending all physical and temporal boundaries,  just like the air we breathe and the air that touches us as winds.

We need to breathe the air and to eat bread to sustain our life on earth. Likewise, we do need the Holy Spirit- God in pneuma and ruah, and the Son, who is the living bread, God in sarx, to maintain our eternal life. And, all of these necessities for life are provided by the Father in heaven, whom we see at the end of ages, through the Son’s return.  In the meantime, while living on earth, we continue to breathe the air and eat bread that our fathers provide.

After all, the love and mercy of the Father, sent to us as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit, are to sustain our eternal life – just as we need bread to eat and air to breathe to maintain our earthly life.  And, just as the airs that fathers in our families cast, making our family atmospheres, are to guide the children in the families in the right directions, the Holy Spirit that our Father in heaven provides is to shepherd us as  to heaven, just as Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

We are so grateful to the Father in heaven and fathers of our families on earth for what they provide for us.

Of course, not everyone is blessed to have idealistic fathers, who provide. Some of us had to grow up without fathers’ love. But, if they believe, then, they are still blessed by the Father in heaven.  As said in Psalm 27:10, even our earthly parents have forsaken, the Father in heaven will not. And, Jesus also assured his constant presence with us in the Holy Spirit even after his Ascension (John 14:26; Matthew 28:20), reflecting this love and mercy of the Father. It’s up to our belief to recognize this love and mercy of the Father.

To those who have been hurt because of the absence of their fathers’ love, may His unconditional love and mercy heal them through the parakletos, which literally means comforter called to be with you, in  sarx, the Son, and in pneuma, the Holy Spirit, as parakletos is always with us until the end of ages, as Jesus assured (Matthew 28;20).