Who are you? Did you ever get asked that question? I have been asked that question over and over again over the years but even more so in these last few weeks since the work I was involved in with Pope Leo’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Journalists, educators, theologians don’t mean to be rude, they just genuinely want to know who I am and why I was there. So I have been answering them. I am a Catholic pastor in Los Altos, Silicon Valley, California who is trying to help people to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am one of twelve children born in Ireland. I am an engineer who became a priest who now serves to bridge the gap between two worlds.
If I asked you that question and waited for an answer, then asked it again, and again, something interesting would happen. After your name, most of your answers would come from your relationships. I am a husband, a wife, a mother, a son. I belong to this family, this parish, this neighborhood. We are who we are largely because of who we love and who has loved us. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus presses on exactly that question of identity, and his answer is a challenging one.
Jesus tells his disciples that whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than him is not worthy of him. To people who treasure family above almost everything, these are startling words. But Jesus was not dismissing family. He was widening it. He was building a different kind of family, one large enough to hold all of God’s children. His own family thought he had lost his mind and tried to bring him home (Mark 3:21), yet he kept stretching the circle outward. Like Pope Francis loved to say, “todos, todos, todos.” Everyone, without exception, without favorites.
So what makes a family a family? Think about your own. Every family has its own way of doing things, its own rhythms and habits, the small signals that say, “You belong here.” The way you do things together is part of your identity. And Jesus is telling us that the same is true of the family he came to gather. Our way of doing things as a St. Simon family is that all are welcome, and all who wish to come are welcome. That is who we are.
For Jesus, love is the act of total self-giving, and he asks that of every one of his disciples. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” he says. I have watched that truth play out in family after family across this community and in every parish I have served. The parent who rises in the night, who works the extra shift, who quietly sets aside their own plans for the sake of a child, that is the Gospel made visible. We celebrated those parents last weekend on Father’s Day and last month on Mother’s Day. They are our living models of self-giving love. When we look at them, we are looking at our own identity as Christ’s family.
Jesus then turns to the smallest acts. “Whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, will surely be rewarded,” he says. Notice how ordinary that gesture is. A cup of water. In God’s family, no role is too small to matter. Every member does a little, and together that little becomes everything. Some serve in ways that are very visible; others in ways no one sees, but no one is less important. The one who teaches and the one who prays, the one who cooks and the one who cleans, the one who leads and the one who simply shows up, all of them are building up the family.
Here at St. Simon, that means each of us has a role. Small or large, prominent or behind the scenes, in active ministry or in quiet prayer, every one of us has a part to play in our shared identity as a welcoming, self-sacrificing community. When you next wonder what you have to offer, remember that the family is built as much by the cup of water as by the great works.
I encourage you to please join me in giving Fr. Gerald Nwafor a warm welcome when he joins our St. Simon family on Wednesday July 1. We are grateful to have him as part of our community. As construction work continues on our campus this summer, I ask for your patience and your prayers. We are building not only walls and walkways but a place where this growing family can gather for generations to come.
We are baptized into Christ, drawn into the very life he shares with the Father. That is our deepest identity, and everything else flows from it. So let us keep acting like the family God has made us to be, one cup of cold water at a time, until the whole world can see who we are.
God bless,
Fr. Brendan