Saint Paul says an incredible thing: Through Jesus you can become a true child of God, and not only children but heirs, welcomed with full membership into God’s family, and not only heirs but “joint heirs,” able to call God “Father” just as Jesus does.

DECIDE RIGHT NOW what this Sunday is about: exhorting Catholics to intellectually embrace the fundamental doctrine of the faith? Explaining the mystery of the Trinity (to no one’s satisfaction)? Providing the scriptural origins of an idea-feast? Determine now why this solemnity is on the calendar and what good it does to your assembly to observe it.

For those of us over a certain age, the minute we hear Paul referring to the disciples as sons of God as he does in today’s second reading, we feel the urge to break out into a refrain of “Sons of God,” a popular 1970s Communion song that was etched in every young Catholic’s memory.

As children of God, we turn to our loving Father for mercy and forgiveness.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When Jesus goes up a mountain, two important things often happened.

The sign of the cross is surely the most known and practiced symbol and gesture in Christianity. But when we cross ourselves and say the accompanying prayer, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” what are we saying, exactly?

God makes three requests of his children: Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, now.  —African-American proverb