A Father With Open Hands

Today we celebrate Father's Day. We offer this Mass for all the fathers and men here with us: fathers, husbands, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles, and the men who have acted like fathers in our lives.

We pray for all the spiritual fathers God has given us through the priesthood and the religious life — the Pope, our Patriarch, our bishops, and our priests. And we pray especially for all the fathers who have passed away, in the hope of the resurrection.

As we reflect on Father's Day, we look at the role they play in our lives. At a very basic level, fathers , they provide, protect, and they are present to their families.

In providing, they work long hours to collect and to gather.

In protecting, they lay down their lives to guard their families from every danger, from the outside and from within.

In their presence, they give stability and security, and they lead their family where it needs to go.

For this reason, we give great thanks to God, who established this fatherhood on earth to model His fatherhood in heaven.

And yet — all these things we celebrate in our good fathers today, Jesus seems to flatly contradict. He says: sell your possessions.Give away the money you make as alms. What about my family? Store your treasure somewhere you can't even see it?

If I gave you this advice in 2026, you'd think it was terrible fatherly advice. If a young man came to your daughter and said, "Here's my plan — I'm going to sell everything I have and give it away," you would not call him responsible. You'd say, "That's no way to provide for a family."

So is Jesus a bad father? Is He telling you to close your business, sell your house, and empty your children's savings?

No. Hear me clearly — He is not.

Scripture itself says, in the First Letter to Timothy: "Anyone who does not provide for his household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." God commands you to provide. So Jesus is not contradicting that.

What He's doing is asking a harder, deeper question. Not "Do you own things?" but "Do your things own you?"

Let me show you what that looks like with each of those three words.

First, providing.

A father's duty is to accumulate — savings, a house, a future. Jesus says to liquidate. The rich fool in the Gospel did exactly what we would normally praise: he built bigger barns to provide. And God called him a fool.

Here's the thing: Jesus isn't against providing — He's againsta providing for the wrong things. The fool provided for his barns, but he never provided for his soul, or for the poor man at his gate.

So in plain terms — this is not about selling your house or closing your business. It's about this question: do your children see you treasure your bank account, or treasure God? When you provide for your family, are you also teaching them that everything you have is a gift to be shared — not a fortress to be guarded?

What does it profit a man to provide everything for his children, and leave them nothing of God?

Second, protecting.

A man is called to protect his family. Protecting means keeping them safe, building walls, holding them tight. But giving alms means letting go, opening your hands.

It feels reckless. How do I protect my family if I give our security away?

But Isaiah, in our first reading, blames the people of God in his own time — because they protected themselves, and in doing so they abandoned those in need: the widow and the orphan. "Defend the fatherless," God says. "Plead the case of the widow."

The truth is this: the father who only protects his own builds a fortress; the father who is generous builds a kingdom.

The real protection God calls us to isn't building a wall around our family — it's raising children who will one day stand between the vulnerable and the harm, and who will be unscathed, because they have God with them.

So protecting isn't about a higher fence around your house. It's about the kind of family you raise.

Third, presence.

A man is called to be present. And it is a challenge today to balance all of that — to be there with your children and your wife. Not just physically, but to step into their world.

Jesus says to store your treasure in heaven — somewhere you can't watch over it. And He says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

It sounds like we're being asked to be absent. But it's the opposite. St. Paul tells the Corinthians: You cannot be truly present alone. The eye needs the hand. The father needs the community.we are one body.

The truth is this: a father obsessed with guarding his earthly treasure is never truly present — his heart is always in his barn, or back at his workplace. But the father whose treasure is in heaven is free to be fully present here.

Jesus doesn't pull your heart away from your family. He frees your heart for them.

So here's the test, and it's simple. Look at everything you own — your house, your business, your savings — and ask one question: Is it a wall, or is it a well?

A wall keeps people out and keeps you safe inside. A well is something others can come and draw from. God isn't asking you to tear down what you've built. He's asking you to turn your walls into wells.

So with all this advice — to sell our possessions, to give away what we have, to provide purses for ourselves in heaven — is Jesus a bad, irresponsible father?

No. He is the perfect one.

He provided — by emptying Himself for us.

He protected — by laying down His life.

He was present — telling us, "I am with you always."

So to sell, to give, and to release — is how we provide, how we protect, and how we stay present, in the way of the Kingdom. Every instinct we honor in our fathers, Jesus doesn't cancel — He turns it inside out and fills it with glory.this

So this week — fathers, and all of us — do one counterintuitive thing. Loosen your grip on something. Give where it costs you a little. And discover the great secret of the Kingdom: The one who holds everything with open hands is the only one who is truly free to give.

Amen.