Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the image of the Father, and God is the best of
fathers. He provides for all of our needs. And in keeping with this, our Lord worked the miracle of
the multiplication of loaves and fishes to show his compassion on his people. He saw them there
without food, and he provided what they needed, and they were filled. They recognized his goodness
and his greatness. They wanted to make him king. So he left and went to the other side of the lake
and they followed them there looking for physical, natural food, bread. And that was
when our Lord, as a good father, elevated their hearts and their minds. He wanted them to have
what they needed, including the bread that feeds the body, but he wanted them to have something
more. And so he proclaimed this discourse on the bread of life, and it was
the bread of life.
Words which were beautiful and consoling, but some of them were hard words as well. And our Lord
laid things out very clearly and drew a line in the sand. As a good father, he told them what they
had to do to obtain eternal life, and he was very, very honest with them. Some of them didn't like it,
and they wouldn't walk with him anymore, but that didn't make him any less of a father for that
reason.
Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Pius V, who was also a very good father, and he blended in his
own life the virtues of justice and mercy. He came to the papal throne after the Council of Trent and
was given the task of reforming many institutions within the church which were in shambles. Rome
itself had a lot of problems. And so he was able to do that. And so he was able to do that. And so
he was able to do that. And so he was able to do that. And so he was able to do that. And so
there was a lot of problems. There was a lot of brigandry and lawlessness within Rome, and he brought
that under control by applying severe penalties, very severe penalties for lawlessness. And he did,
in fact, clean up the town. But at the same time, when he became pope, he also took care of the sick
with his own hands. He visited the hospitals on the day of his election. The custom during papal
elections was to give away a lot of money to the people who were in the city. And so he was able to
largesse, the church's resources to the people in the crowd, just treasures and things that were
about, they would just throw to the crowd and then they would have a big banquet afterwards. Instead,
Pius V made sure that the largesse was distributed to the poor and that instead of having a grand
banquet with all the cardinals, they would send the food to the hospitals, to those who were in
need. And throughout the papacy of St. Pius V, this was his fatherly concern expressed by being
honest and truthful and firm and using his authority on behalf of the common good and at
the same time taking care of those who were in need with the heart of a father. He addressed
real needs. Sometimes people are hungry.
And they are poor. And they need to be given food and clothing. Sometimes people are living in
error. And they need to be told the truth. Sometimes people are lawless and causing harm to
other people and they need to be punished. And he was willing to take responsibility for all those
burdens and to execute them in a measured way with justice and mercy. That's what real fatherhood
is. So he was a man of prayer and action. As a pope, as a Dominican, he was more a man of prayer than
action. But he gave us all an example of fatherly love for those who need fathers. And we all need
fathers. And this is a fatherless world in which we live in. And even when sometimes fathers are
present, their fatherhood is not recognized and affirmed.
And sometimes they don't go to the full extent of exercising their fatherhood for that very reason.
But more than anything else, now what we need are men who are willing to take responsibility for their
families and do what is right. Plain and simple. No matter what anybody says. Because that's what's
needed today more than anything else. The crises, the scandals, the injustice, and the
lack of love, the hatred, is very often due to the fact that the things that just need to be done,
you know, correcting the errors that are taking place, are just not done. So we need to pray for fathers,
pray for priests, pray for the Holy Father, pray for bishops, that they all might be given the grace
to be shepherds after the heart of Christ.
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