"There was great joy in that city." These words from the first reading express the feelings of many of us today as we see doors open again that, in my opinion, should never have been closed.

If the Church is truly a family, then people cannot be left outside of the church. Who leaves their children on the street when they knock on the door and ask to enter? In the fourth Gospel, Jesus himself exclaims: “A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains.” (Jn 8:35) I pray that these children who return today will remain forever in this house, which is theirs as well, the house of their Father, and the house of their Mother, which is the Church.

The Gospel today picks up on this same idea of permanence when the Lord says that He will send us another Advocate "to be with you always", the Spirit of Truth who “remains with you, and will be in you."

Since these homilies in pandemic times should be shorter than usual, I invite you to meditate during the week on the Lord's words this Sunday. They are very comforting and remind us that we are not alone in the trials of this life. God is with us. The verse before the Gospel repeated to us the very words of the Lord, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him." It is what we have always known as the mystery of the "indwelling of the Holy Trinity" in the soul of the just. It is the greatest gift of a Christian - to have God, truly, not figuratively or poetically, in the heart.

On Friday we celebrated the feast day of St. Isidore, a simple Spanish saint from the Middle Ages who was a farmer. They say that when St. Isidore arrived home each day, the first thing he did was kiss the chest of his little son because he knew that from the day of his son’s baptism, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit really lived inside him. What a wonderful mystery!

Today's Gospel is a page that I use frequently in my personal prayer, especially the verse in which the Lord says, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”

Yes, Christ is in us. When we say in the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father who art in heaven", I encourage you to think that we are that heaven, that the Trinity is not far away but deep in each heart that is in the grace of God. If we have lost that presence due to mortal sin, let’s recover that gift in the Sacrament of Penance and always live with a very keen awareness that Jesus is in the Father, we in Him, and He within us.

I will finish with the words of the great French saint, John Eudes, who says in reflection on this gospel, "I am Life and I have come so that you may have life. I live and you live. On that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. That is to say: as I am in my Father, living from my Father, my Father who communicates it to me, you also live from my life, and I am in you, communicating that same life to you, and thus I live in you and you live with me and in me.”

On this joyous day, on the return of his children to their Father's house, let us ask God to let us live more and more inwardly, placing all our attention on the hidden presence of the Trinity within us and finding in it the light, strength and joy that we all need. In this time in which there is so much talk of “distance,” may the CLOSENESS of God help us to understand the true language of Christian love.