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
