Celebrating Fatherhood

Dear Friends,

While Father’s Day is not a liturgical feast, it is a time to bring together the fathers of our world with the Father of the Universe, the Creator Father, whom Jesus called “Abba”…Daddy. There is no life without fathers. Of course, there is no life without mothers, but that’s for another time and place to reflect on. Let’s focus on fathers and fatherhood.

Fathers, like mothers, are either revered because of their abiding love or cause pain because of their absence of mind, body or spirit. The best of fathers are good men, for whom fathering is a privilege and a daily pledge.

Relatives of one of our Sisters live in the Midwest. I’m told that this is how the family handled education at the height of the pandemic. As a family, they decided that they would set school time aside as special every day. Dad was to be the teacher. He would wear business clothes, including a tie. The children would wear their school uniforms. And mom, they decided with delight, would be the cafeteria lady. Such fun! Such working together! The dad of this family had probably never envisioned the daily pledge of fathering as including a stint as their classroom teacher. But dads do what they have to.

Family life is the cornerstone of society, the testing ground of the muscles of our minds, the place where our hearts can be broken or they can soar. Blown by the varied winds of the Holy Spirit or destroyed by destructive human hurricanes, family life is central to all life.

On Father’s Day, we salute family life as the hearth of God, ours for the making with God in the shaping. Worth the effort because the effort is not ours alone.

Before Jesus, no one in Scripture dared to call God Father. But Jesus named the God of his relationship Father/Abba/Daddy. Jesus not only used this enduring and endearing name for God, He passed on to us the invitation to do the same. Live with this thought about the Father that Jesus offers us in John 14.23, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Today, why don’t we pray for all fathers – 

            that they may not grow weary,

            that their hearts and minds be absorbed by the wonder of fatherhood

            that they may turn to the Father of Jesus, our Father, for courage, sustenance                              and delight in their life with their children.

~Sister Joan Sobala