The Beauty of Fatherhood

St. Joseph, Ora Pro Nobis!

Today marks the celebration of Father’s Day, a day on which the wonderful gifts, blessings and joys of fatherhood, the central role of the father in the family and the paternity of the priesthood of the Church are brought out of their frequent obscurity and popular denigration and raised up to the divine light of God the Father. Human fatherhood, like human motherhood and human marriage, is not merely a biological accident or social function; rather, it is an image, a sacramental sign on Earth of the participation of humanity in the mystery of God through the beauty of the family, both the natural family of father, mother and children and the supernatural family of the Church.[1] Fatherhood is in this way central to the identity and purpose of men, built into the very nature of masculinity. Following the archetype of Adam, the examples of the great patriarchs of the Old Covenant, the New Adam Jesus Christ and the Fathers of the Church, men share in the very paternity of God Himself; as St. Paul poetically writes,

For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named. (Eph 3:14-15 DRA)

Fatherhood can be held up to a standard of three interrelated marks or characteristics: authority, providence and cultivation. Adhering to these marks, fathers, whether natural or spiritual, represent the three divine offices of Christ, that of priest, prophet and king, and perpetuate the prophetic types of Christ in Adam the gardener, Moses the law-giver and David the priest-king. The faithfulness of fathers to their vocation is seen in how well or how poorly they image these three marks of fatherhood to those in their charge, giving themselves in self-sacrificial love according to their nature as men and as sons of God.