Today is Fathers’ Day, when we honor all the fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and spiritual fathers who have guided and formed us over the years, leading by example as much as in words.
Jesus Christ gave us the most loving and inspiring title for God when He told us we must call God “Our Father.” The relationship between father and child is unique, irreplaceable, and life-shaping. I would particularly like to thank my own father and my uncles and grandpas for all that they have done for me.
We all understand the importance of mentors and teachers in math, science, history, sports, music, business, carpentry, or any other field of study and endeavor. And yet, for many decades now, men in general and fathers in particular have been always framed negatively, as either useless fools or barbaric oppressors. Only if we fractured the family, vilified men, mocked fathers, and celebrated promiscuity could we be “free” and happy, we were told. And we see the devastating effects all around us. I have never forgotten what one priest told me: “The modern world does not hate God because He is God. They hate God because He is a Father.”
One of the great plagues on our society now is fatherlessness, either because of out-of-wedlock birth, divorce, or other factors. Youth are less likely to engage in crime or become pregnant out of wedlock at a young age if they have engaged fathers. Girls and boys alike need fathers who will teach, discipline, praise, advise, and above all love them. And having married parents helps children succeed.
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The great Archbishop Fulton Sheen once reflected:
The duty of parents to children is to rule while avoiding exasperating severity on the one hand and excessive indulgence on the other. God gives parents a child as so much plastic material that can be molded for good or evil. What if God placed a precious diamond in the hands of parents and told them to inscribe on it a sentence which would be read on the Last Day and shown an index of their thoughts and ideals? What caution they would exercise in their selection! And yet the example parents give their children will be that by which they will be judged on the Last Day.
Even Jesus Christ, who was both God and man and therefore did not need to be taught anything, submitted not only to His Heavenly Father but also to His foster-father on earth, St. Joseph. Jesus in the Gospels always addresses His Mother respectfully, and we can be sure He did the same in speaking to Joseph. “And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them,” Luke 2:51 says of Christ’s relationship with Joseph and Mary. Together Joseph and Jesus worked in the carpenter shop, and Jesus spent more years of His life at home with Joseph and Mary than He did with His Apostles.
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The very first commandment God gives after His first three related to our adoration of God is “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be longlived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee [Exodus 20:12].” Today, on Fathers’ Day, thank your fathers or, if they have passed on, honor their memory. And tell the young men you know that they could have no greater joy, blessing, and responsibility in this life than to be a father.
