Just a little fun fact before I begin my homily. Gehenna was a garbage dump outside of the city of Jerusalem. It’s where all the garbage went and was burned. So when you hear the word Gehenna in the Scriptures, it talks about a place where the fire continues to burn and the worms do not die. So that’s the image of Gehenna that’s given in the Scriptures.

A couple weeks ago I was standing on Jackson Boulevard right outside Mercy Home. I was waiting for a friend to pick me up in his car. As I was standing there, one of our young men who’s been with us about six years was walking across Jackson Boulevard. I had one of those moments that we all have at times. It was a Kodak moment. When I saw the young man coming across the street, he waved, I waved. He’s coming towards me and six years of his life flashed before me. He came from a very difficult family situation, a broken home. There was a lot of violence in the home. He came to us as a C/D student and within a year or two’s time he was an A student in high school, at a good high school. He got himself in some terrible trouble going back home and he was arrested. We worked with him for two years through the court system to get the situation resolved.

He had the appropriate consequences here at the home and with the law. He graduated from my high school. I actually got him into my high school because he was thrown out of his high school. Saint Viator was very kind to him. He went on to DePaul University and, as he was walking across the street, he is now a junior at DePaul. He is studying law enforcement, believe it or not, and doing extremely well.

He’s walking across the street. My friend gets out of the car and my friend says, “Who is that?” Thinking that, the young man wasn’t sure who he was talking to, he said, “Oh, that’s Father Scott. He’s my father.” It was one of those Kodak moments that really captured my heart. I thought in the 25 years here at Mercy Home, maybe I’ve made a difference. I say this because, in the Gospel today, Jesus is very clear about stating who it is that we stand for and what it is that we stand for, that we align ourselves with the Father, that we call the Father the Father and we live out of the love of the Father in this world of ours. That we do what Saint Francis of Assisi said so clearly, “Proclaim the Gospel. Use words if you must.”

People will know that we’re disciples of the Lord Jesus, that we love God Our Father, not so much by what we say but by our behavior, the way in which we act in the world. Then people will know that we are aligned, we have aligned our lives with the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.