Veritas - From the APRIM

Fathers' Day: Godly Fatherhood – Sacrifice and Celebration

At Blackfriars we name Term 3 as Assumption Term because the feast of the Assumption of Mary occurs during this term. The Assumption Province is also the name of the province of our Dominican friars. This feast directs our focus to Mary as a model mother, servant of God and disciple of Jesus. As a part of our Catholic tradition, Mary has been held up as the archetypal virtuous mother and loyal servant of God to whom we should all aspire. As it happens, Father’s Day also falls in this term. For Catholics, who is or are our archetypes of fatherhood? As a Catholic boys’ school, who do we hold up as the father our boys should aspire to be?

One role-model father that the Church has traditionally presented is St Joseph, foster father of Jesus and husband of Mary. There is not a lot in scripture about him; we know he was a carpenter and was poor. What is also evident is that he was sacrificially caring, prepared to wear shame through extreme loyalty to and love of Mary, intensely committed to Jesus’ care and deeply faithful to God. At some stage before investigating it deeply, I considered Jesus’ use of the term “Father” when referring to God may have been because of the qualities of Joseph - that is, that God resembled Jesus’ earthly father. However, as great as Joseph was, this is not the reason; my thinking was the wrong way around as I point out soon.

Jesus referred to God as Abba (father) – why? The term “Abba” in the Aramaic Jesus spoke, best translates to the affectionate term “daddy”. Through this term, Jesus implied a personal and intimate relationship with God. This was language that would have been shocking to Jesus’ contemporaries who viewed God as somewhat distant. To quote Mark Brumley:

“Since Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, they must hold that He most fully reveals how we, by grace, should understand God: as Father…And that is not the Fatherhood of God but the Godhood of the Father — that God is a loving Parent.”

Mark Brumley - https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8279

Moreover, and most obviously, God is literally the father of Jesus (not His mother), and Jesus knew it!

Some have come to express unease at the seemingly sexist view of God. The Catechisms of the Catholic Church attends to this (CCC 239): “We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.”

This is both abstract and nuanced – Jesus used this term, so it is meaningful. Pope Saint John Paul 2nd in his Theology of the Body identifies the father is the initiator (and I would describe the mother as the co-operator) – Jesus understood this. As one priest puts it, “God is also Father in the sense that His act of creating resembles the generation that is proper to human fatherhood (…it is more a question of human fatherhood resembling God’s Fatherhood)”.

Hence, Joseph’s demonstration of human fatherhood was something resembling God’s Fatherhood. This contrasts the incorrect thinking of my past - God resembling a father. My thinking was wrong because there are fathers whose behaviour does not resemble God (just as there are mothers whose behaviour does not resemble Mary). However, a father (hence creator/initiator) that is loving, good, responsible, protecting, sacrificial, powerful and authoritative resembles God. (Note that the ‘loving’ and ‘good’ qualities negate the possibility of abuse of power and authority.)

These Church understandings are archetypal and will forever provide a template for men to aspire. That is, fathers should aspire to be like God the Father as revealed through Jesus and role-modelled by Joseph.

The sacrificial qualities of God the Father and Son, as well as Joseph, are often not considered when people think about their fathers. I am reading a new book called the Boy Crisis by Dr Warren Farrell – a relevant read for an educator in a boys’ school. Dr Farrell articulates a purpose void that has emerged for boys and young men as they consider their futures. Dr Farrell identifies several causes for this purpose void, as well as the problems it creates, that I do not touch on here. However, the traditional purpose of a male was to become a husband and father, but this is a desire in decline (and again I will not touch on the reasons here). According to the Pew Research Centre, men aged 18-34 reporting marriage as one of the most important things in life declined from 35% to 29% between 1997 and 2012. Conversely, the numbers of women of the same demographic rose from 28% to 38% on the same question. Moreover, there is an increasing number of men saying they will never marry. The fundamental purpose of marriage is to establish conditions for children and hence fatherhood and motherhood. To me, it appears as if deliberate moves to erode traditions established over times that precede history and transcend cultures is not serving humanity well.

However, there are certainly problems within the traditional arrangement and Dr Farrell is very clear on these. One is the absence of fathers in their children’s lives, which occurs for a myriad of reasons, including employment. This employment not only reduces time with children, but also extinguishes the passions a father may have, which Dr Farrell describes as the “glint in his eye”. To quote Dr Farrell, “Fatherhood was about your dad trading in the old glint in his eye – what he loved to do – for the new glint in his eye: his love for you.” This was the sense of purpose a traditional male had.

For the fathers of this traditional era, Dr Farrell’s book includes several testimonials and I must quote one that reveals relevant insights:

A woman in one of my audiences declared, “My father’s career was the exact same as the glint in his eye. My father always did what he wanted to do.” Her resentment was palpable.

[Dr Farrell asked her to find out from her dad what the glint in his eye was before he met her mother, and to get back to him].

“Dad said that when he was in high school he loved being in plays and telling jokes. But that he couldn’t afford to spend years in Hollywood or New York to find out if he could ‘make it’. He said he chose a science major in college because his parents said that it was more practical than theatre. Turns out he didn’t like science that much.”

I could tell something had happened because she was now referring to her dad as “Dad,” not as “my father”:

“Before Dad met Mom, he said he got into flying small planes. He got in all the hours and made enough money to be able to fly by himself. When he met Mom, he took her for a sunset flight, and even though she was nervous, she always told us kids how Dad waxed poetic about drifting into the sunset, and how that was when their first kiss happened and all that.

Dad’s a pilot, so I figured that was what you called the glint in his eye. But he said being a pilot was about FAA regulations and responsibility, not freedom and poetry and first kisses. So that made me understand what you meant about the difference between “glint” and a profession.

But that wasn’t the big news! I always resented that Dad never took me flying. That I wasn’t part of the glint in his eye. So I got up the nerve to ask him about that. He told me that Mom absolutely prohibited him from taking us kids, including my brother, flying in the small plane, because small planes were so dangerous. And he said that Mom and he agreed she wouldn’t go with him again after she became pregnant, until we kids got older.

So I guess what I’m saying, Dr Farrell, is that this was the most important discussion I ever had with my dad. It makes me feel a lot better about him, especially knowing that the reason I never went with him in the small plane is that I meant so much to him, not that I didn’t mean enough to him. Thanks a lot.

Oh, just one more thing. I kinda feel bad that since my dad has been putting me and my brother through college that he’s pretty much given up his small plane flying. Do you think I should encourage him to get back into it?”

I told her, “Ask him how he feels about it now. But more important, tell your dad how much you appreciate him giving up the glint in his eye for you, and for your mom and brother. Once you let him know that, the hope for you being the new glint in his eye will be restored. When he feels appreciated by you, and by your brother and mom, his life’s purpose will be fulfilled.”

Another contemporary thinker and writer (Dr Jordan B Peterson) also identifies sacrifice as uniquely human and an action done now for a better life later. A good father wants a better life for his wife and children, so they sacrifice themselves for this. It is through this better future for loved-ones that they gain a better future for themselves – one in which their purpose is fulfilled. In this regard, we see that Jesus’ sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice of God the Father – on