Because once we remember that we worship a God whom even wind and sea obey, and that he loves us exactly as we are, the power of others' opinions begins to fade.

It’s fitting that we would encounter the mustard tree’s humble beginnings on Father’s Day, because so much of fatherhood is about those moments of silent vigilance.

“[But] “only human” is all we need to be, because there’s someone else with us in those moments, and he is the source of unity himself.”

Jesus did not suffer and die for the unnamed masses. He does not offer his body and blood to some random stranger who happens to be in the communion line. His love is not poured out on everyone interchangeably. It is poured out individually, in a unique friendship that will never be repeated and can never be replaced.

Most of us will never fully understand the mystery of the Trinity, but God gives us enough clues that we can start to imagine the awesome, all-engulfing power of its reality. We can have some small sense of the immense love that courses without pause between and among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But we should take heart, because there’s a much more powerful force at work - the only source from which power can truly be generated. The more we follow it and turn our lives and relationships over to it, the more we will live and build together fruitfully as one.

A mother’s heart is marked by something beyond reason and rationality. It is self-gift in the extreme, offered whether it will be recognized or not, appreciated or not. It really is a remarkable embodiment of heaven on earth, and it’s only fitting that we would honor and celebrate the Christ-like love that is motherhood.

An extraordinary thing happens in this Sunday’s gospel: Jesus calls us his friends. Can you imagine that? His friends!  It only makes sense, then, that we spend a few moments contemplating the nature of friendship

Whether we recognize it or not, acknowledge it or not, the stark fact is that we can’t do anything on our own: we simply don’t have the strength, intelligence, stamina, or power to make one bit of difference.

In short, we belong to him. What a startling, wonderful reality: simply because we’re his, we get to enjoy a loving intimacy with God that all the money in the world couldn’t buy.

Bishop Barron once said the great hope of ancient Israel was not a “jail-break” from Earth, but rather the exact opposite: “the unification of heaven and earth in a great marriage.”

It has been said that humility is to charity what the foundation is to a building. It’s only in emptying ourselves of vanity, self-admiration, selfish interest, and pride that we allow God to fashion and fill our hearts with his loving spirit.

 But if Christ did rise from the dead, nothing can ever be the same again. If God literally became a man, and that man actually died on a cross for love of us, and that cross truly became the source of the world’s salvation - that changes everything.

During this final week of the Lenten season, I ask you to join me in making a contribution to Several Sources Shelters.

[But] Patrick’s zeal wasn’t just wild, untamed emotion; rather, it was carefully contoured by and channeled into love of his Irish neighbors.

The root word of “alms” means “mercy,” and the act of giving alms - ie, showing mercy through material gift - renews and restores within our hearts the fraternal charity to which we’re called.

Left to innate impulses, we’d constantly be on the hunt to satisfy our every desire. Lent, then, is an opportunity to order our lives according to something other than that neverending chase. It’s a chance to lift our minds and hearts to something higher.

The point, finally, is to recognize what we knew well as children: as comforting as a tattered old blanket may be, nothing can compare to the love and security of being held close in the arms of a loving Father.

By starting off sincerely and small, we will gain traction in the way of love. And if we grow in love throughout Lent and over the course of our lives, we’ll find that nothing at all can derail us from going God’s way.

So perhaps Jesus commanded silence because he wants to remind us that if all we see in him is a means to an end - if we don’t see him as a real person - we miss the most important gift of all: his friendship.