THANK YOU, FATHER In June, we celebrate Father's Day in this part of the world. Blessed be God that we all have a Loving Father of whom Jesus Christ spoke so much about. We should congratulate all fathers and say to them, we thank our Heavenly Father for giving us the gift of life, for forming us in our mother's womb! Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, beginning with the phrase "Our Father who art in Heaven..." (Mt 6:9-13). Whoever succeeds in understanding and knowing who the Heavenly Father is, has found a true Father's Love. In our Hispanic culture, most men who have been or are fathers face a huge dilemma, it is very difficult to be loving fathers as defined by expressing love for our sons and daughters because we drag along the machismo of our ancestors which complicates modern life. One day while praying at a retreat, the image of my father, Don Jose, came to my mind and for the first time, I felt a compassion instead of resentment towards him. At that moment, I cried because the Lord made me understand that my father lived a life of loneliness and his father, that is my grandfather, did not know how to give him love and thus my father got trapped by alcohol and lived a lonely life, as a result of his ancestry he did not know how to show me his love; because of that retreat encounter, I ended up feeling very sorry for him, may he rest in peace. Since that day, by the Grace of God, I was freed from my resentment of Don Jose. Today, I pray for all of us men whose fathers were unable to show us the love we needed so much as kids. I was a good candidate to repeat the same to my children as my father did to me because I did not have a loving father by my side to show me the way to be a good, loving father to my three kids. The wonderful thing is that I recognized the love of Our Loving Heavenly Father, the one that Jesus presents to us in the parable of the Prodigal Son as the merciful, loving father. That model of a loving father changed my life and I decided to learn to be an affectionate and loving father as a result to my kids. When our first son was born, I began to practice and I would tell him, “I love you “mijo”!” and kiss him. And I did the same with my other two children, to the point that even as young adults and even now that they are parents, I hug them, tell them that I love them and kiss them. It does not matter that they are grown men, and the same goes for my daughter. And all this resulted from an encounter with Jesus, Son of the Father. It was through Him that I was able to cut the…