Our Father

There once was a little girl who dreamed of becoming a great writer. Whenever she visited her grandmother she brought along her latest composition, and the grandmother was always happy to read it and make suggestions for improvement. On one occasion, the grandmother’s advice was, “Never use the same word twice in the same sentence, if you can possibly avoid it.” The grandmother soon discovered how well that lesson had been learned when the child presented her with a sampler she had made in sewing class. It read: “Home Sweet House.”

Today’s text is from St. John’s Gospel, which is more of a “Home Sweet Home” than a “Home Sweet House” piece of literature. The text is taken from a rather long exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees in which one word is repeated over and over. Throughout his Gospel, St. John quotes Jesus as repeating the word, “Father,” in the same paragraph, in the same stanza, in the same sentence, in the same…