A Grateful Dad

I have not felt well the past few days, but the silver lining has been the way my kids have expressed their affection and taken care of me.  Getting me this or that, getting themselves this or that so I could rest on the couch - they are extremely generous little souls.

I am a grateful dad in another sense too. I remember attending Mass a couple of Sundays after my oldest, Brennan, was born and as the Eucharistic prayer began, just weeping in a loving awe at the realization that swept over me:  My little boy, the most important person in the world to me, was loved by Jesus. Jesus had stretched out His arms and let nails be driven through them for my child. I was grateful that Jesus had died for me, but now I felt an unspeakably deeper gratitude because He had laid down His Life for my child !  After Lily's birth, that gratitude doubled.

I make the Apostle Paul’s prayer for his readers my own this afternoon:  "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph.3:17-19)