When God made you my father

June 16, 2024           Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time           Father's Day

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, yet it is the humblest imaginable.

- Mahatma Gandhi

A cat is put in a steel chamber along with the following infernal device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny amount of radioactive substance, so tiny that in the course of an hour one of the atoms will perhaps decay, but also, with equal probability, that none of them will; if it does happen, the counter tube will discharge and through a relay release a hammer that will shatter a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would tell oneself that the cat is still alive if no atom has decayed in the meantime. Even a single atomic decay would have poisoned it.

- Erwin Schrödinger, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, 1935

He said, “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”

- Mark 4:30-32

There’s this song by Riley Roth that Eloise and I felt would be perfect as a Father’s Day offering. It’s called When God Made You My Father, written from the perspective of a child expressing gratitude for the gift of their father. Each refrain ends with the words, “when God made you my father, He was being good to me.”

I imagine people might relate to those words very differently. To some, those words might reflect exactly how they feel; to others – perhaps those whose fathers might not have been as nurturing – the words might not resonate as much. I remember feeling quite saddened when I first heard that part of the song, because I kept thinking “I really don’t know if I could say that about my dad.” Suffice it to say the same song may speak to people in different ways.

A few months ago, I met a person who was so remarkably like myself. I kid you not – this was like a Divinely engineered encounter straight out of a movie! We were kindred spirits in the way our minds worked, the questions we’d ponder, right down to the mannerisms in our writing, our attachment to past terms of endearment, and yes, similar issues with our fathers. We’d often joke that we were crafted out of the same soul. So I wonder, might she also find the song bittersweet, and if so (and I say this with a sense of fallibility so as to avoid any rash claims about God’s intentions…), could it be that God was being good to us in allowing us to undergo the experiences that enabled us to understand each other so well?

The 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz proposed that we live in the best of all possible worlds. This would mean that the circumstances of my birth, the school I went to, the food I had for breakfast this morning (it was nice btw!), the bully who took my lunch money, and yes, the father who raised me, were all the best out of the gazillions of possibilities that could have been! While I’m not quite sure how I feel about Leibniz’s view, I can appreciate the virtue in keeping firm the faith that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) What if there’s a majestic tree in your future, and you just so happen to be in the mustard seed stage right now, like that tiny little atom that will make the world of difference for that cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment?

With that faith in mind, Eloise and I would like to offer you Riley Roth’s song, When God Made You My Father. Happy Father’s Day!

With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director