There is a tradition still observed by some men. Before they propose to the woman they love they first go and ask permission of their prospective bride’s father. Those who do this have realized a great truth. A loving relationship does not isolate us, it involves us with the family of those we love.
God is a community of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and being made in His image, we are made as a community. From conception we are dependent upon a network of other people. None of us can exist as isolated individuals cut off from the rest. This extends even to how God has chosen to make Himself known to us.
In one sermon Saint Peter converts three thousand people. These would have been the same people who, only weeks before, abandoned Jesus and gave Him up to His persecutors to be put to death. They did not accept the grace of God when God stood before them in the person of the Son. In their hard-heartedness they did not hear Him.
But hearing about Him from Peter, cuts them to the heart and they cry out asking what they must do. Peter calls them to repent, to give up their old self-centered ways and be baptized into Christ and the community of the Church.
We each have a personal relationship with Jesus. But just as a marriage involves more than one man and one woman, our relationship with Jesus involves His family, the Church.
Pax vobiscum
4th Sunday of Easter