Today is Father’s Day, but also Sunday, the Lord’s Day. And God not only established fatherhood as the natural vocation of men, but even encouraged us to call Him “our Father.”
We live in a culture that vilifies masculinity and especially paternity, a culture that urges young people to see fatherhood as a curse, especially within marriage. “But from the beginning it was not so,” as Christ would say. From the Old Testament patriarchs to Christ’s foster-father Joseph, from the Genesis command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) to Jesus responding to the plea of Jairus for his daughter (Mark 5), we see the centrality of fatherhood in the Bible. God gave the patriarchs to the Jews as fathers by blood, and He gave the apostles and their successors to Christians as fathers by faith. And Jesus told us to call God “our Father.”
Before discussing the main topic of this piece, I would like especially to thank my father, my grandfather, my uncles, my great-uncles, my parish priests, and all the men who have guided me as teachers and mentors. God established both physical paternity and spiritual paternity as key parts of His plan.
In Luke 11 and Matthew 6, we find Jesus teaching His disciples how to pray. Matthew 6:9-13 has the following quote from Jesus:
Thus therefore shall you pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our supersubstantial [or daily] bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen.
This is the prayer that Christians now say as the “Our Father.” Perhaps we have said it so many times that we have forgotten how profound and beneficent it is.
Not only did God the Son Himself give us the prayer, but it introduced a new relation between man and God. It is not that God did not speak in a paternalistic way to the Jews, because He did, and the Jews did sometimes refer to Him as Father (e.g., Isaias 63:16, Deuteronomy 32:6). But God was primarily a king and judge in the Old Testament. Then God became man, became one of us, and we became children of God in a new and marvelous way, truly sharing in His life.
Therefore, fatherhood is now doubly blessed, whether it is physical or spiritual, because if it is fatherhood that includes moral uprightness, it partakes in the paternity of God and brings new children into the kingdom.
Read Also: HUD Cuts Biden Enforcement Backlog by 27%
Furthermore, it is obvious that society depends upon fatherhood, because it depends upon families. America was a much stronger country when there were far fewer out-of-wedlock births, a much higher birth rate, and fathers present in the home. Saving this country requires not simply voting for certain politicians, but also encouraging young men to become the kind of husbands and fathers the current generation and future generations need.
Discipline, hard work, personal responsibility, self-sacrifice, integrity, piety, patriotism, and courage. These were the virtues that men used to pass down from one generation to the next, that fathers would teach their sons and daughters. If we wish to see all our political and cultural evils remedied, we must start with fatherhood, and invoke the aid of Our Father Who art in Heaven.
