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In this
month’s Marriage Partnership magazine, Jamie Bartlett relates a
story about how—even as an adult—her father continues to teach her
important life’s lessons.
Married but a short
few months, Jamie had what she called “a major argument” with her
husband, Mike. In a fit of rage, Jamie stormed out of the house and
onto the back porch to call her parents in Michigan. As Jamie dialed
her parents’ telephone number, she envisioned in her mind that she would
them that she’d be on the first flight out of Philadelphia. Of course,
her parents would take their daughter’s side in the marital dispute and
say, “Of course, honey! Come home!”
The actual telephone
conversation didn’t quite go the way Jamie envisioned, however. Her
father told Jamie that coming home was not an option. “I’m sorry,
Jamie,” her father said, “but if I allowed you to come home, I’d be
interfering in what God is trying to teach you.”
“But I hate it
here!” Jamie exclaimed. “You’ve never told me I couldn’t come home!
Why are you being so unfair?” she demanded.
“Jamie, your gut
reaction has always been to bail when things get difficult,” her father
replied. “Your marriage vows were for better or worse, until death do
you part. I know you didn’t think the ‘for worse’ part was going to
come so soon, but it did, and you need to learn how to deal with it.
You’re not welcome in our home under these circumstances. You need to
work out things with Mike.”
With his daughter
sobbing at this all too sudden reversal in her expectations, Jamie’s
father continued: “I love you, and that’s why I can't let you come home.
I’d be hindering what God wants to do in your marriage….You’re equally
at fault in the argument you just had. Now go back inside and
apologize.”
“Thanks a lot, Dad,”
Jamie said sarcastically.
After the
conversation ended, Jamie reported that she started crying, but these
weren’t tears of sadness at being rejected by her father. These were
tears of joy! “How could this be?” she wondered. It suddenly dawned
upon Jamie that she had a father who knew what was best for his daughter
and would tell her what was best for her but, in the process, would
point her to God no matter how Jamie might feel or react.
The tears of joy
carried with them an awareness at the way Jamie had treated her husband
and feelings of humiliation for doing so. That’s
when Jamie
decided to go back inside the house and apologize for her behavior.
Once inside, however, Jamie broke down in tears and it took a bit of
time but Jamie explained the phone conversation she’d just had with her
father. “I’m sorry I turned to my parents, instead of to you,” Jamie
said. “From now on I promise I won’t try to run home when things
between us get tough.”
Jamie is a lucky
child because some 25 million American children live today absent or
apart from their biological fathers. One in three children—and only one
in five inner-city children—live in homes with their fathers. Millions
upon millions of fathers have abdicated their divine responsibility for
loving, disciplining, teaching, supporting, providing moral guidance,
protecting their families, and leading their children to God. “Maturity
does not come with age but with accepting of responsibility for one’s
actions,” Dr. Edwin Cole, the father of Modern Men's Ministry, has
written. Dr. Cole also has noted: “The lack of effective, functioning
fathers is the root cause of America’s social, economic and spiritual
crises.”
According to the
Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Justice, the Department
of Health and Human Services, and the Bureau of the Census, the 30
percent of
children who live apart from their fathers account for 63 percent of
teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions,
71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in
chemical-abuse centers, 80 percent of rapists, 85 percent of youths in
prison, and 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders. In
addition, 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from
fatherless homes. In fact, children born to unwed mothers are 10
times more likely to live in poverty as children with fathers in the
home.
The correlation
between fatherless children and crime is so strong, notes social
researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, that it cuts across all racial and
economic lines. Furthermore, the President of the Institute for
American Values, David Blankenhorn, adds, “The absence of fathers from
family life is surely the most socially consequential family trend of
our era.” Or, as the columnist Armstrong Williams has recently
declared: “It is terribly troubling that our society accepts fatherhood
as a luxury, not a necessity.”
That some marriages
aren’t good enough to preserve may be understandable. Yet, it is
particularly regrettable because fathers do matter. Undoubtedly,
a mother is essential to a child’s development, but there are some
life’s lessons that only a father can teach.
Why and how do
fathers matter?
I think it comes
down the fact that fathers who accept and understand their divine
vocation to be a father to one’s children involves pouring out one’s
and blood continuously for one’s
children and, as fathers
“do this,”
they teach their children life’s lessons. These lessons don’t end
when children move out of the house. They continue even into young
adulthood, as Jamie’s story indicates, and beyond. These lessons last
not only a lifetime but also extend down through the generations.
These lessons begin
with little things like how Daddy isn’t Mommy; how to fish, ice skate,
shoot baskets, golf, hit and catch baseballs; fixing things, mowing the
lawn, and keeping the yard in shape; and, don’t forget, how to be
stubborn driving the car around for an hour, all the while pretending to
know where one is and refusing to ask for directions. These seemingly
trifle experiences are what bond children to their fathers.
Over time, these
lessons expand to include some more important and more valuable
matters. Like how the most important assets aren’t found in brokerage
accounts, property valuations, or fancy cars, but in the quantity of
time a father spends with one’s children. Like how the most important
ladder to climb isn’t the corporate ladder but the stairway to each
child’s bedroom and every evening. Like how one’s commitment to a job
pays the bills but that a father’s commitment to show up at each child’s
late-afternoon, evening, and weekend activities is priceless.
Upon all of these
foundational lessons, fathers teach their children what life is really
all about. These are the truly substantive lessons. Life isn’t about
being tough. Nor is it about being strong. Wealth doesn’t qualify
either. Nor does always being right. What life is all about is being
kind. Being understanding. Demonstrating a virtuous character. And,
fidelity to one’s
word. All of this requires a father who loves his children with a
father’s “strong arm.”
Only a father can
teach a son how to carry himself as a man, how to strive for lofty
goals, work hard, and develop the character of a virtuous man. Only a
father can teach a daughter how a man properly treats a woman—in the
example of how he loves his wife—and how to interact appropriately with
the opposite sex; to strive always to do one’s best, overcome challenges
and adversity, and fulfill one’s potential. And, let’s not forget—as
Jamie’s story attests—being a father also requires leading one’s
children to God.
Obviously one’s job
or career
isn’t what
motivates a father who understands his divine vocation and strives to
live it out as God asks each and every day. No transforming these
moments into life’s lessons and treasured life-long memories that enable
one’s children to grow in grace and wisdom before God and humanity—just
as Joseph taught Jesus—is
what motivates a father.
I once read an
article in which an author whose name I do not recall discussed how
important it is for a child to see one’s father genuflect in church and
kneel in a pew to pray. The author wrote that children believe their
fathers are not only tough and strong but also omnipotent. “My father
can beat up your father” is something most kids—especially sons—have
said. But, the simple action of genuflecting in church and kneeling in
a pew teaches children that there is someone or something more
omnipotent than their fathers. It’s God before whom even fathers bend
their knees and get on their knees in prayer when approaching the
Omnipotent One. This is how fathers teach their children about
reverence and humility before God so that when fathers do teach their
children spiritual lessons and speak about God, their children
understand that their fathers aren’t speaking about themselves. In this
regard, Armstrong Williams has noted:
I saw [my father] read
the Bible daily, pray habitually, and attend and participate at church
every Sunday. My father provided the spiritual leadership that the
Bible calls for, and I believe this kind of leadership should ideally be
handled by a man. Regardless of the religion, this cannot be done
properly if the father is absent.
In all of these and
so many more ways fathers teach their children the most important thing
a father can give his children is his flesh and his blood, continuously
poured out on their behalf, while asking for nothing in return. When
fathers teach these kinds of life’s lessons, their sons hope to become
the men their fathers are and their daughters hope to marry men who have
the personal character and spirituality possessed in abundance by their
fathers.
Where there is no
such father in the home, children obviously suffer. The columnist Dutch
Martin has written about his experience this way:
I grew up on welfare,
the youngest of six children with an absentee father. My family life
was dysfunctional to say the least, and not having my father in my life
left a void in my soul that at times has been emotionally crippling.
Who would teach me how to drive a car, tie a necktie, balance a
checkbook, and relate well to the opposite sex? Most importantly, who
would teach me how to be a man? I don’t care what modern feminists say,
a woman cannot instill in a male child the tools he needs to be a man.
I had to learn many of life’s lessons of manhood the hard way—pretty
much on my own.
Remembering the
spiritual and moral decay that living in a fatherless home on welfare
festered in my family and all the families in our neighborhood makes me
both angry and sad….Don’t let anyone kid you, folks. Fatherlessness
hurts like hell! You never get over it; you just deal with it. I’ve
been dealing with it for 32 years.
Today we celebrate
the Body and Blood of Christ, God’s living presence passed to us through
two millennia.
The Body and
Blood of Christ make present for us what Jesus sacrificed for us. We
give thanks for the Body and Blood of Christ because in pouring out his
body and blood for us, Jesus has given us spiritual freedom. Since the
night before he died when Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my
body,” and took the cup and said, “This is my blood,” Jesus has
continued to be truly present, God and man, wholly and entirely, in the
Eucharist.
Unfortunately, however, just as fatherhood no longer speaks to many
men—not just those who have abandoned their children but also those
whose children are not their first priority in life—the Eucharist no longer speaks to many of us. In
fact, some studies suggest that more than 50 percent of Roman Catholics
no longer believe that Jesus is truly present under the forms of bread
and wine. Instead, these Catholics think, what happens when we gather
around the altar is a mere symbol of Jesus’ body and blood. Like the
important life’s lessons our fathers teach us, we oftentimes miss the
important life’s lessons the Eucharist teaches us. Why? Because we
fail to recognize and to appreciate what has been poured out for us.
For Catholics, in particular, this is the true origin of the crisis of
faith that exists in our Church and in our nation as well because if the
Eucharist merely symbolizes Jesus’ body and blood, then Jesus isn’t
truly present with us.
The Last
Supper wasn’t simply an historical event, a sign of Christ’s friendship
and love for his disciples that we memorialize each time we gather
around the altar. It is the moment when Jesus first promised to give
himself continuously—his real flesh and his real blood—each and every
time his disciples “do this in memory of me.” Roman Catholics—as do the
Orthodox—believe that Jesus is truly present in his body and blood.
Furthermore, when we partake of his life, we experience not just Jesus’
physical presence but we also form a more intimate relationship with
Jesus to the point that we actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus
Christ alive, present, and at work in the world today. Complex
religious rituals, good works, faraway shrines, or apparitions to be
close to God aren’t really what’s important. What is important is the
Eucharist because that is how Jesus Christ becomes truly present within
us. “You are what you eat,” St. Augustine told his congregation when
preaching about the Eucharist. “Become who you eat.”
Just as many
today believe that the Eucharist is merely a symbol of the reality, so
too many today believe that fatherhood as I described earlier it is
merely a quaint symbol of a bygone era. Now that women have greater
control over their lives and reproductive “rights,” they don’t need men,
at least according to Maureen Dowd in her recent book “Are Men
Necessary?” For all too many women, having children out of wedlock
with absentee fathers are “in” while carefully selecting a man who has
the character and spirituality to be the father of one’s children is
“out.” As Kathleen Parker asked in a recent column: “To say that
children want, need and deserve to have a father seems as unnecessary as
insisting that they want, need and deserve oxygen. How did we arrive at
not knowing this?”
“If only you
knew the gift being offered to you,” St. John noted in his gospel
(4:10), we’d understand and we’d love what Jesus has given us in the
Eucharist. But, on this Father’s Day, we’d also understand and love how
our fathers have blessed our lives. They not only have taught us those
life’s lessons which had to power to transform us into sons and
daughters of God. They have also taught us, more substantively, to
fulfill our divine vocations as they fulfilled their divine vocation by
leading us to God. |
HOMILY
