Father’s Day

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“And rising up he came to his father. And when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and running to him, fell upon his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).

While he was yet a long way off, the father was looking out every day to see if his son was going to come back that particular day, and then he saw him a long way off.

The picture that we get in Scripture of fatherhood is very rich, very warm, very beautiful. On this Fathers’ Day, we have an opportunity to look at our role as a father and see the great vocation that God has given to us.

It's said that a good mother loves to see her children getting on well with their father. The family is the only institution where we learn life's most sacred lesson: unselfish love.

And while the child learns an awful lot about love from his mother, in many ways the father has to be a model of that unselfish love.

Pope Saint John Paul has written some beautiful things about the family. He talks about the family as “a school of deeper humanity” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981 and Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, December 7, 1965).

All these words of John Paul II about what the family has to be, you can say, have to be embodied in the father figure.

We're building “the civilization of love.” He says the family is “the sanctuary of life” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, February 2, 1994). We're building “the culture of life” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995).

The family is a school of love, a school of virtue, a school of the soul.

The word “school” contains many meanings. The Second Vatican Council likes to say that the primary educators are parents (Vatican II, Gravissimum educationis, October 28, 1965).

The first school is the family. In the primary and secondary schools that the child goes to, they just put the icing on the cake, but the cake is baked at home.

Therefore, in a special way, the father figure has to be a teacher in that school—a teacher with his words, but most of all, with his example, with his life.

John Paul II liked to say that “the future of humanity passes through the family” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, November 22, 1981).

One speaker at a conference I heard recently said, “Only Christianity is capable of changing the hearts of men. NGOs can't, governments can't.”

Father figures have a very powerful mission and weapon to be able to change the hearts of men, give children something great to think about, help them to live by great ideals, help them to see that ultimately, we're all called to the eternal wedding feast.

Fathers have to form souls and shape souls. Our vocation and mission as a father develops first of all in a family environment. Our “first apostolate is the home” (Josemaría Escrivá, Letter, January 9, 1959).

There was a man in Ireland many years ago who used to attend recollections of Opus Dei. He was a very prestigious actuary. Later he ran for public office. Very influential.

One of the things he learned from these recollections was that his family was very important.

He had eight children, but he always said he thought that the most important thing in his life was his work. But through formation, he began to see that his family was as important and more important than his work.

He began to organize his family like he organized his office. He installed a filing cabinet at home, opened a file for each one of his children, had regular meetings with his wife to discuss yearly goals, quarterly goals, weekly goals, and he had a reporting session with each one of his children once a week or once every two weeks.

He took his family life seriously and it took on a whole new meaning for him.

We have to try and create the atmosphere of a home. Be very professional in organizing our home because so many wonderful things have to come from the formation that we give our children. We're building the future.

Our Lord wants us to have a generous cooperation in the plans of God, to sacrifice our likes and dislikes, to be affectionate, because everybody has a heart, everybody needs affection, encouragement, kindness.

I heard a priest in Asia many years ago saying that young people today can be faced with great pessimism. It's good to be aware of that.

In their studies, in life, in finances, you have to lift them up; give them something great to live for.

As fathers, we have to be easy to live with, good communicators who know our children because we spend time with them.

St. Josemaría used to say that parents have to try and be good friends of their children (Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 100). It's a very easy thing to say but not such an easy thing to achieve.

I taught in another country one time and there was one particular fellow who was of average intelligence, but his performance was much higher than you would have expected.

He was an only son. The father had three daughters, and he was a very successful businessman; a busy man but he had a special time for his son. Of all the fathers that I knew, I think he was the one that most managed to be a friend to his son.

Once, I asked him, “How do you manage this?”

He said, “I gave up the cocktail circuit a couple of years ago. I try to be home by six in the evening. I try to spend an hour with my son each day. We're buddy buddies; I know what's going on in his life. We talk about all sorts of things.”

Then I asked him, “What gave you that motivation?”

He said, “I spent a couple of years working in Wall Street and I got to know a Jewish man there who was very successful. He was on the up and up. One time he invited me home to his house in upstate New York.

“It took us five minutes to get from the gate to the house, and that's not because the car was breaking down; it was an enormous mansion.

“Then he showed me around the house room by room—a beautiful place, beautifully set up—and then we came to his bedroom. Above his bed, there was a big sign that said, ‘The greatest failure of a man is to fail as a father.’”

He said, “I was a bit surprised; he was this super-successful man on Wall Street, with a notice about failure hanging above his bed. I asked him, ‘What's this all about?’

“He said, ‘When I was on the up and up in Wall Street, I put my kids into boarding schools, and Christmas time came and I was very busy, so I just left them there. Summertime came and I was also very caught up, so I left them there also, and a couple of years went by.

‘Now one of my sons is on drugs and the other one is something else, and the third one is something else.’ He painted a very dismal picture.”

This man told me, “I came home to my own country, and I put a sign over my own bed to remind myself every day.”

When you meet fathers who've made big mistakes with their children, they might be very successful in life in all sorts of other ways, but they can have pain in their hearts because of those mistakes. There are certain things we can't afford to get wrong.

We can ask Our Lord in our prayer that we might grow to be the good father that He wants us to be. We need ongoing formation. We need to be reminded of these points, reminded of what it's all about, what I'm here for.

We need to learn how to grow in all the virtues because the father figure in the home has to be a model of virtue, of justice, of order, punctuality, of cheerfulness, of kindness.

The greatest thing a man can do for his family is to love his wife very much. The children learn love when they see it in the home; they catch it by osmosis.

That means we have to know the words and the gestures that only those who love know are important.

We have to be there at special times: family times, birthdays, anniversaries, special family moments. We can't afford to miss those things.

There might be something special that our wife asks for or the children might ask for. It might not seem to be very important, but the very fact that they're asking for it, asking for our presence, is already a compliment.

It's already a signal that this is something important. Perhaps we have to stop what we're doing and live that family priority. Family values mean family priorities.

We have to be there at special moments. If your sons and daughters see that you come to their football matches or their hockey matches or their volleyball matches, you support them in their sports, in their interests, in their pastimes—you build bridges.

Maybe you go to the trouble of checking their homework each night or a few nights a week. That can also be very encouraging for them, because that's their work.

You look at their work, you compliment them on it, you encourage them, and maybe you help them to improve. But they see that you see that their work is something valuable and important. It communicates a special message.

We have to know how to communicate in the home. A father once said to his wife, “Why do you let our son talk to you like that?”

The mother answered, “Because that's the way you talk to me.” Our words can be like arrows. We have to be careful with those words.

Love is expressed through details, through thoughtfulness, through being proactive.

St. Josemaría used to say couples have to keep their love young and fresh after many years of marriage, as it was before you got married (cf. J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 26).

There are times when you've got to sweep your wife off her feet, keep dating her, keep attentive to the small things that send great messages. Mother Teresa says, “A few kind words may be very short, but their echoes are endless.”

I was with a couple last week and just in an odd moment, the husband had to say to the wife, “How long have we been married?” And she said, “Four and a half years.”

And he spontaneously said, “It seems like four months.” I think she'll remember that for the rest of her life.

There are always misunderstandings, miscommunications, as there are when there are any two people present. The devil tries to break up unity in a family.

You've got to be aware of that, smoothen things out, be an instrument of unity. Manners are important, table manners, “Please” and “Thank you” and “I'm sorry” because they express charity.

The best times in our life have to be at home and with our family, not out with the boys or with other people.

We may have to socialize from time to time, there may be certain obligations, but always be glad to get home and at a reasonable time.

Our families, which are the domestic Church—beautiful phrase, the domestic Church—all the values and beliefs that come from the Church have to find their way into the home and be expressed there in the atmosphere, in concrete things.

Our families become centers that radiate the Gospel message. They're an oasis for other families and marriages, a great heritage to society and to the Church, and apostolic schools.

Family always has to come first. This is the apostolate within the family. Our Lord gave great dignity to family life.

We should be careful of wishing things were different. ‘Oh, if only it wasn't like this.’ ‘Oh, if only something else.’

This is the family that God has given to me. This is where He wants me to be with these particular problems or these financial difficulties or these illnesses or this or that or these little problems.

This is where God wants me to be holy through my self-giving, through giving importance to my family life, dedicating myself to it. No matter what the circumstances may be, this is where I am called to be holy.

Even if everything might turn out to be the complete opposite of what it should be, or even a bit of a disaster, I'm still called to be holy here.

To be more effective as a father, like all good managers, I have to ask myself: What can I contribute in this situation?

We need a great sense of responsibility, initiative, patience in bringing up children. They are the treasure that the Lord has placed in my hands. They are the primary mission of my life in this world.

My silent service and faithfulness take on great meaning. This is the will of God for me.

I need to be very focused. I need to learn how to forget myself, to be a pillar of family life, at times humble, full of faith, trusting, a just man, manly, available, full of fortitude, because I have to rear great human beings.

That means that I have to live like a great human being, to bring up my children to be a good son-in-law or a good daughter-in-law, to have that edge, to go the extra mile.

I have to live a spirit of service in the home, so I give example. I teach my children that anything that the household helper manager might do, I am willing to do.

I sweep the floor occasionally. I wash the dishes. I wash clothes. I paint a wall. I wash the car. Sweep the driveway. I do whatever is necessary. No jobs are beneath me.

When we lead through virtue, and we're called to be leaders, the leadership of the family is very important, then we get followers. We get joiners.

We prepare our children for their marriage and to help them to solve their problems when they come to those situations.

If we look at our marriage or family life at the moment, we might see things that we need to change or improve. This is the benefit of ongoing formation. We get to be reminded of things. We see where more input is needed.

If you were to ask what is the theme song of your fatherhood vocation at the moment, could it be Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Long time passing.

“Once upon a time, I was falling in love and now I'm only falling apart.” The Eclipse of the Heart has taken place. “Once upon a time, there was light in my life.”

Our vocation is a dynamic thing. There's always a new call to start again. We have to create a whole new revolution in society about this, to help many other fathers to fulfill their role.

It's said that a dead father is better than an absent father, because at least a dead father, you know where he is.

We could thank God for our family vocation. A father once told me—a doctor in London who had eight children and was rushing to the beatification of St. Josemaría in Rome in 1992, and he was bringing two of the smallest children with him. He was a bit late finishing his practice. They had to run for the plane. They were rushing all the way.

He was carrying one baby in one arm and another, maybe three years old, by the hand of his wife. They had to rush the plane. They got on. They just got their seats, and they sat down with a big sigh of relief.

A man leaned over across the aisle and said to him, “I can see that you are a great father.”

The guy was flabbergasted. He said, “That was one of the proudest moments of my life, for a stranger to tell me, ‘I can see you are a great father.’”

What a beautiful thing to say to people. Fathers also need encouragement, especially when they're running for planes with a couple of kids hanging out of them.

We have to try and see what we can do to help fathers, just like we try to help mothers. Help fathers to be better, to encourage them. Expose them to good ideas.

St. Josemaría says in The Forge, “And I also tell them: you Christian mothers and fathers are a great spiritual motor, sending the strength of God to your own ones, strength for that struggle, strength to win, strength to be saints. Don't let them down!” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 692). We fill our children with strength.

The father also has to be a man of prayer. Children have to see you praying. Sunday Mass is not negotiable.

We leave a legacy in our spiritual life. We try to accompany each family member, first and foremost with prayer, helping them to improve, helping them to see that they have to have a positive influence in their environment.

We practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. We bring them to visit poor families or the elderly or the lonely.

We go through their wardrobes and drawers occasionally, and see the things they don't need and accompany them to spread those good material things that God has given to us to other people. That's why we teach them to be generous, to have a social conscience.

We instill great virtues in them: virtues of giving, of generosity. They come to be people who know what their souls are worth. They give until it hurts.

If ever God calls a child in your family to be a member of a supernatural family in the Church, we see this as the greatest grace and honor that God could give to us.

That way, we practice the school of virtue. We don't allow any bourgeois lifestyle, any pagan lifestyle. Children have jobs in the home. We follow them up that they make their bed, that they keep their room tidy, that they do their homework, they take care of their friends.

We're sensitive to indulgence or excessive comfort, and we live that principle in our own life also: a temperance, an order.

We are examples of heroic Christian witness in faith, and detachment, and humility, in difficult economic situations, when the extra child comes or there are problems within the family.

Fathers realize that I am “the work of art that God wants to produce” (cf. Eph. 2:10), that my children see that work of art and want to imitate it. We show them the way to Christ.

Sometimes you just take a step back, be humble, let your wife shine, “be silent and disappear” (J. Escrivá, Letter, January 28, 1975).

Appreciate, with those simple words, that show your spouse that you appreciate all the little things that she's doing for your home, for your family, for your children.

Very often the sanctification of our family life is full of little things, little duties, little acts of love or encouragement or words or affection, little deeds of forgiveness, of patience, of unity.

A father told me when I asked him, “How is your family?” He says, “I've become the driver. I drive my children to their sports occasions and to their parties. I find my weekends are filled up with driving them here and there, but I use the driving time to talk to my children.”

There was a great father. He wasn't a wealthy man, but he was a great father.

If we think and plan family gatherings, get-togethers, mealtimes, feast days, Christmas, the father has to be thinking about family fun so that our children enjoy family life. They also see that ‘my family is the best place to be.’

If you find that they bring many of their friends to your home, that's a good sign. It's not a problem.

We have to try and be a dynamo in family life, be there for people, create that “bright and cheerful home” (J. Escriva, Christ Is Passing By, Point 78), and realize that everyone has a heart.

That means sometimes we have to sacrifice our likes and dislikes. We might not get to watch our favorite football match.

Our heart has to be on the ground. Our Lord talks about the “grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies” (John 12:24). We're a family man, 24-7.

We live unity of life. No matter what our friends or colleagues may be doing or where they're going, we are family men.

There was a group of travel agents once that was being taken out of Buenos Aires to some island that they were going to review as a resort.

The plane took off full of these travel agents. Somebody got on the microphone and said, “We’re going to have the weekend of our lives. We're going to have a great time. This island is going to be fantastic.” He began to paint a picture that was not very savory.

There was a man there, the sort of person that would be listening to meditations like this, who realized that this perhaps wasn't the greatest thing to be hearing, the tone that this guy was having, the atmosphere he was creating for the weekend.

When he finished, he went and took the microphone. He said, “Fine, let's have a great time. But let's just remember that twenty minutes ago at the airport, we left our wives and our children. Let's not do anything this weekend that might disappoint them.”

With those few words, he changed the whole atmosphere that had been created.

As family men and fathers of families, we have to lift up the tone of the environment, spiritualize it, bring a lot of common sense there.

We have to remind our children to take care of the extended family, to think of their grandparents, to call them, to bring them there to meet them regularly.

Or maybe to bring them also to cemeteries, where grandparents or great-grandparents are buried—a very good reminder to them that one day that's where they're going to be.

Golden words in the family are “Thank you,” “I'm sorry,” “Can I do anything for you?”

Father have to try and be on top of the material details of the house, keep things in good condition—serving without it being noticed, without keeping the score, without reminding people of ‘how hard I work, how little I complain; ;ook at all the great things I've done for you.’

We’re told in The Forge, “You should be full of wonder at the goodness of Our Father God. Are you not filled with joy to know that your home, your family, your country, which you love so much, are the raw material which you must sanctify?” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 689).

Fathers sometimes can have broken hearts. I heard of a father recently, a young man in his late 30s, who had a five-year-old son and a four-month-old daughter, and his wife passed away last week from leukemia. Here he is at the start of his life with a broken heart.

But whenever we find broken hearts or experience them ourselves, Fulton Sheen says it's because God wants to enter into it a little more. “God's ways are not our ways” (cf. Isa. 55:8).

When we come across these situations or experience them ourselves, it's because God has some great apostolic plan in mind for us that we don't understand.

But when the years pass, it becomes clearer—the mysteries of life. We can try and live a great faith in those moments, great hope.

This is when the sacraments can help us very much, to help us to have that strong faith and strong hope, and to see, ‘This is part of my calling to holiness.’

We can ask Our Lord to help us to look a little deeper at this vocation to be a father, to see how we can live it better.

Christ showed the depth of His love through service. “He was humble, yes, even to accepting death, death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).

We could ask Our Lord for the grace to understand the mystery of love a little better. “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16).

The primary role that we have to fulfill is to show love in the family. There's a song that says, “Love in your heart was not put there to stay. Love is not love until you give it away” (Oscar Hammerstein II).

Love is wanting life's best for others, even if it doesn't include us.

We can look at the ways in which we can grow in this area. Ask Our Lord for the grace to have the concern of a good shepherd.

St. John of the Cross says to be prepared “to lose always and see all others win is a trait of valiant souls.” One of the qualities of such souls is that they will “give rather than receive, even till they come to give themselves.”

And why we serve in the family? Service alone is not enough. No husband or wife just wants service; they want love. We serve with refinement.

Often, the most valuable gift we can give our children is good example—a good example of being a good citizen, a good member of society, a good parishioner, a good participator in community events and school functions.

We learn from Our Lady many great things, how to build a family.

She wanted the best for her friends. “They have no wine” (John 2:3). Our Lord is moved to work that miracle (John 2:4-10).

Our Lady went to serve Elizabeth for three months (Luke 1:39-56), a serious contribution of friendship.

The little duties of family life or social life may be pathways that seem very ordinary, simple, but which we have to make divine through love.

“Happiness doesn't come from doing things that are easy” (cf. J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 795). Often it comes from carrying the cross.

On this Father's Day, we can ask Our Lady that she might help us to go a little bit deeper in this calling that we've been given, to take it more seriously all the time, so that we learn how to be a better father, a better family man, and that we bring enormous joy to all the people that God has placed around us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW