This Father’s Day weekend, the Gospel offers us a remarkable reassurance from Jesus: “Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” He reminds us that God the Father knows us completely, intimately, down to the very hairs on our head. It is an image of a Father who is not distant or indifferent, but close, attentive, and deeply in love with each of us.

For most of my life, I heard that truth at Mass. I just didn’t feel it.

Faith was part of the family routine growing up, and I’m grateful for that foundation. Candidly, I’ll share that I participated in Mass more out of obligation than out of any real relationship with God. I knew about our Heavenly Father. I just didn’t know Him.

That changed at my first son’s Baptism.

Fr. Brad, our former pastor, now with the Lord, had a way of making sacred moments feel truly alive, and I will always be grateful to him for making that day so special for our family. Standing there with my son, my wife and my parents beside me, I felt something I had never felt before: a warmth, a presence, a sense that something holy was happening in and around all of us. I remember my son smiling up at Fr. Brad during the blessing, and feeling like something was happening in that exchange that was bigger than all of us. I didn’t have a word for it then. I’ve since come to believe it was the Holy Spirit.

Something had opened in me. And looking back, I can see how the nudges kept coming. My neighbor kept asking me to join our Parish Pastoral Council. I kept saying no, or maybe later. Eventually something shifted and I said yes, not fully knowing why. I had very little idea what I was getting into. What I do know is that it has given me far more than I have given it.

Not long after, our new pastor, Fr. Rich arrived, and I sat down with him and tried to put words to what I had felt at that baptism. I told him that prayer had always felt hollow for me, like I was going through the motions without really connecting. Fr. Rich encouraged me to begin every prayer with the words “Heavenly Father.” It sounds small. It changed everything. In the two years since, I have prayed more, and received more from prayer, than in the previous 38 years of my life combined.

He also helped me name what I had felt that day. That’s how the Holy Spirit works, Fr. Rich told me: quietly, through people, through moments, through a word spoken at the right time. I’ve come to believe he’s right.

At my infant son’s first Mass on Easter Sunday this past spring, I stood in the communion line and felt an almost electric sense of presence, that unmistakable feeling that something holy was happening. After receiving his first blessing from Fr. René, President of the Paulist Fathers, my son turned toward the livestream camera, and my father was watching. Recovering from knee surgery, he had tuned in to his own parish’s Easter Mass from home, but the livestream had gone down, so he found ours instead and joined us, six hours away. I had no idea. I only learned later, when he told me he had seen my son and me in Mass. In that moment, without anyone planning it, every father in my life was present: our Heavenly Father, our pastoral fathers, and my own dad.

I notice it at Mass too, in moments I once rushed past. Almost every time we pray the Gloria together, I feel it: that same tingling, that same sense of something greater than the room. There are times the feeling is so profound I physically struggle to sing the prayer. During the seasons when the Church intentionally sets the Gloria aside, I miss it. It has become my favorite part of the Mass, the weekly moment I feel His presence most.

My prayer for all of us this weekend is simple: stay open. The Holy Spirit is not silent. Perhaps we are just learning to listen. And once you start listening, you may find, as I have, that He’s been with you all along.

On this Father’s Day, I’m grateful for every father in my life: our Heavenly Father, my own dad, our pastoral fathers, and the pure, surprising joy of being a father myself. And the blessings keep coming. Next month we will celebrate my younger son’s Baptism, and this fall my older son begins his own journey at our parish school. If only we stay open to receive them, the gifts are everywhere. God is great, and His love is closer than we know.

James Gross is a member of the Parish Pastoral Council and School Advisory Board at Old St. Mary’s, a Paulist parish in Chicago.