Welcome to all of you on this Fathers’ Day. I went to see our oldest parishioner this week.

Her name is Ide Auger. She will be one hundred years old on August 2.

Diane, her daughter, showed me something that was very unique and very special to Ide.

There is a pine tree outside of Ide’s window. On one branch that is eye level with Ide as she looks out her window is one pinecone. There are no other pinecones on the large tree. This pinecone has been on the tree now for a number of years.

Ide spends long periods of time looking at this pinecone. She marvels at the pinecone. It affects all of her day in a very positive way.

In all of the people, events, inside thoughts and feelings, and things to do God is present at eye level with us. God is there. God can be so easily missed as the pinecone. If we were to focus on God, how different our days and lives would be! The first reading tells us that our God is an awesome and wonderful God. God wants to do marvels in our lives.

As God seemingly placed that pinecone in Ide’s life, God has placed himself into our lives in the Sacrament of Baptism. The second reading tells us that we have been adopted into God’s family as sons and daughters. We have been drawn into God’s life.

The Mass helps us to understand what it means to be drawn into God’s life through Baptism.

We are drawn into the prayer of Jesus to the Father. The Holy Spirit joins us to Christ as he offers himself to the Father. The Holy Spirit joins us to Christ as the Father gives his Son to us.

We were made in the image and likeness of God. God brings us into his life. Doesn’t that mean that we are called to live the life of God? God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God to be God has to be a community. We need to live with and for one another.

On this Father’s Day, we honor those men who are in relationship to their children and identify themselves joined with their children. They cannot be who they without their children.

God has made us this way and we are living God’s life that calls us to live this way.

We are fighting a very strong trend in our country today that is called individualism.

It is God and I. It is not God and I. It is God, I, and we. Or to be not grammatically correct but to sound better: It is God, me and us.

The decisions that I make need to include God and his people. I don’t live just for myself, but I live for others. I go to God with and through others.