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Introduction: What My Dad Teaches Me
When
I was a newly ordained priest – going way back to 1977 – I had
a challenge that most newly ordained priests face. I went from
the very structured life of the seminary to the very unstructured
life of a parish. Instead of a day that was mapped out for me
with times of prayer, study, and exercise, I found out that my
daily schedule would be mostly up to me.
Unlike most parishes,
my first assignment did not have an early morning Mass. And it
is safe to say that the lights in the rectory did not go on early.
Yet, somehow, at 26 years of age, I couldn’t imagine not emerging
from my room on a weekday until after 10 a.m. The reason? I thought
of my father, then at the ripe old age of 56, who was on his
way to work by 6:30 a.m. and who would not return until 6:30
p.m. I figured that my day as a spiritual father of a parish
family required the kind of dedication I had seen in my own dad
throughout my life. It was not the last time I would draw many
parallels between my ministry as a priest and my dad’s vocation
as husband and father. To this day, my father inspires me in
my vocation as priest and bishop and offers my good advice free
of charge!
It was my instinct to model my priestly life on
my dad’s example because he was there for me when I was growing
up. In my family, mom was the day-to-day manager and with lots
of love and understanding, kept things running. Dad was a hard
worker – very dedicated to his work. He started out as a lineman
for the telephone company, became an installer, then a manager,
and finally an engineer, going to college along the way under
the G.I. bill. His days were busy but he always wanted to know
how our day had gone. If I had gotten in trouble at school, I
hoped mom would give dad only the executive summary, not the
full report with charts and graphs. His discipline was of the
firm but gentle variety and could be mitigated by humor. To
this day, Dad remains the man I never want to disappoint.
Mom
and dad have their challenges. Besides me, they have a son, my
older brother, who has suffered throughout his life from mental
and emotional disabilities. In the early 1950’s there was much
help available and mom and dad did the best they could to cope.
It was a huge challenge but mom and dad never lost patience and
still teach me important lessons about faithful love.
Now in
their late 80’s, mom and dad continue to care for my brother.
He is in a group home and is doing as well as I’ve ever seen.
Not only do they make sure that my brother is well cared for,
mom cooks a big pot of chili and bakes a cake most every week
for Frankie. And in recent years, my father has overcome cancer
with the help of my mother who made it her business to get him
well. “We’ve only been married 62 years,” she explains.
How
It Works
If they were here, mom and dad would object to this
talk. They always warn their son not to canonize them from pulpit
or lectern. And they’re not from the set of Leave
It to Beaver or Father
Knows Best. To this day, there are things mom and dad
disagree over and times when they manage to exasperate one another.
But in God’s grace, they are a living sign of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, “from whom every family in heaven and
on earth takes its name” (Eph 3:15). How do they do it? Let me
offer a few pointers and parallels drawn from what I continue
to learn from my father and mother in their long journey of love
and fidelity.
First is prayer, and by that I mean a personal
relationship with God. It left a deep impression on me that dad
would get up early to go to Mass before he went to work, especially
in the days when our parish had a 5:30 a.m. Mass. About 20 years
ago, sort of on a lark, I gave my dad a set of the Liturgy of
the Hours, the Breviary, the prayer which the clergy are expected
to pray every day. Except in times of truly serious illness,
I don’t think dad has missed a day. And since the 1950’s, mom
and dad have prayed the Rosary every night. Now they are led
via a CD made by the Knights of Columbus of their son, the bishop,
leading the Rosary. Yet the point I want to make is not just
that mom and dad pray a lot. It’s the personal quality of their
prayer.
Without using any theological jargon, dad over the years
learned how to be the image of the God the Father for us all:
the God of gentle strength, of mercy, of tenderness, and utter
generosity, the God and Father whom Jesus Christ has revealed
to us. So also my mother, without speaking of the Marian dimension
of the Church continues to exemplify that maternal love we find
in Mary, the Mother of God, and in the Church which is patterned
on her pure faith and sacrificial love. Mom and dad would never
have described our home as an “ecclesiola” – the Church in miniature
– but that in fact is what they created all these years – the
domestic Church which draws its life from Christ and the Church
herself.
To be sure, mom and dad took our religious education
seriously. They sent us Catholic school and made sure we could
recite the questions and answers from the Baltimore
Catechism.
But more than that, they prayed in a way that enlarged and shaped
their hearts; their life and their prayer were engaged and even
as a kid I could see they brought to prayer what mattered most
in their lives. In their troubles and disappointments, prayer
taught them lessons of love. And in their love for God they made
ample room for us their children and for lots of other people
who needed their love, including the sick and elderly whom they
still visit regularly.
Today lots of parents send their children
to religious education but don’t even go to Mass on Sunday and
perhaps never pray even briefly at home. The chances that their
young people will connect with Christ and the faith are pretty
slim under those circumstances. Unless prayer is deeply personal,
we may not see the need to be a part of the community of the
Church.
Second is teamwork. Mom and dad worked and continue
to work as a team. They may not call every play exactly the same
but there is no doubt they are pulling in the same direction.
Unfortunately, lots of people today don’t see the need for a
team like my mom and dad or yours. In today’s climate, especially
in Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is claimed that a family
with two moms or two dads is the same as a family with a mom
and a dad. This flies in the face not only of what our faith
teaches but also what history, reason, and experience show us.
Men and women are to be each other’s counterparts. Reason shows
us that husband and wife, in their love for each other, are to
bring children into the world.
Reason and experience show us
that husband and wife are to complement each other physically,
psychologically, and spiritually. In this way, moms and dads
forge unique bonds of love with their sons and daughters . .
. the way you’re loved by your dad differs from the way your
loved by your mom but the two loves fit together and give the
child a sense of wholeness – a model for relating in a healthy
way to men and to women and the ability to look at the same truths
and virtues from differing perspectives.
Until recently, governments
everywhere saw how important this is for forming good citizens
and for the strength of society as a whole. But today, as you
know so well, that government is confused. It no longer realizes
why marriage and family matters. It is so intent on satisfying
adult demands it’s forgotten about the children.
In the recent
Kerrigan case, the infamous same-sex marriage decision, not only
did the majority opinion of the Connecticut Supreme Court scarcely
even mention children and their needs … it was brought up by
those whose job it was to defend the existing law that sees marriage
as a union between one man and one woman. This is the job of
the Attorney General – who didn’t go in person to argue this
landmark case but instead sent an assistant! And the assistant
who argued the law did not mention the most important reason
why existing marriage laws exist: because marriage is how children
should be brought into the world. Not a word about the link between
marriage and procreation. In other states, where the Attorney
General did make this argument, those high courts decided differently.
So we can say that the case for the existing law was not adequately
argued!
Even at that, the decision to relativize the husband
– wife partnership, truly a pillar of our civilization – was
made by a single justice imported onto the high court from a
lower court because two of the justices had recused themselves.
This is not to denigrate courts or heroic single parents nor
to say that every heterosexual marriage works. It is to say that
we, as people, are foolish in the extreme to cast aside the unique
of the husband – wife team and it won’t take long for us to see
the consequences of what we’ve done.
Many people of faith and
of no faith at all can see that this is wrong. But as a people
of faith we can see its wrongness with greater clarity. This
is because we know how God loves … for God’s love is a unity
in distinction. Stick with me because it’s never very easy to
describe Trinitarian love. But here’s what we know: God is love.
The persons of the Trinity love one another with a love that
is so great we really can’t fully imagine it. But the Father
is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor is either of them
the Holy Spirit. Rather, in their love for each other, the Father& Son
give rise to the Spirit. It is this unity-in-distinction on which
human love is modeled. This part of what it means to say that
God created man and woman in his image and likeness.
So even
if the law no longer defends marriage, we need to defend it first
and foremost by our example. And in doing this, you and I are
in the same boat. It used to be that my vocation as a priest
had a lot of cultural props. When I entered the seminary, people
thought it was wonderful and hastened to congratulate my mom
and dad. Today, parents actively discourage their children from
a vocation either to priesthood or religious life.
One night
after Confirmation, I was visiting with newly confirmed at a
reception. I asked a young man if he had ever thought of the
priesthood – “Yes, I have,” he answered – “No, he hasn’t,” his
father intervened. “He’s got to get a good education and be successful!”
Aside from begging you not to hinder your sons or daughters from
priesthood or religious life, I tell that story to say that your
vocation trods on the same rough cultural terrain as mine. Husbands
and wives, like priests in love with the Church – we have to
make up our collective mind to live our vocations with the courage
of the early Christians in a largely pagan society. And we have
to be the spark that somehow will ignite the 1.3 million Catholics
in the State of Connecticut to demand better from our public
officials and to make our state family friendly once again.
The third lesson is presence. The most valuable commodity you
can share with your wives and with your children is your time.
And today time is at a premium; we are working longer and harder
than ever. The tendency as you know so well, even in difficult
times such as these, is to give children things instead of what
they really need: our presence. Think about it: the memories
you cherish in your adult years are not so much of things your
parents gave you but rather of experiences you had with them.
Both dad and mom, in addition to everything else, were good carpenters,
plumbers, and electricians. They took a small post-war Cape Cod
house and expanded it by fully finishing the upstairs and the
basement and building a garage-carport. In their early 80’s,
with only a little help, they renovated a bathroom. None of these
skills were passed along to their son – none of them. And it
wasn’t for want of trying. Dad did his level best to teach me
these things but a power saw in my hands is a danger to life
and limb and any shingle that I’d nail down will inevitably leak.
I am sure I held up many a project but Dad took the time to try
to teach me and when we both decided it was hopeless he kept
me on as his apprentice.
As he worked, he talked things over
with me and managed to slip in some important lessons for life
without my realizing what he was doing. I was always proud to
go places with my father and always was amazed at how many people
he knew and how well he could (and can) remember names and faces.
When the “new math” craze hit, dad sat with me until I understood
it and took me to antique car shows and got me all the history
books I wanted. My mom did not work – we were full time work
– and so we saw a lot more of mom than dad. But both were present
to us in their unique way and each of them took us into their
confidence in such a way that you knew that mom and dad loved
each other and were on the same page. To this day, my best conversations
with mom occur when she washes the dishes and I dry them.
I guess
the point is presence. Almost any credible study about family
life shows the importance of having a dad who is really present
to his family Dad-less families are more likely to lag in education,
to experience poverty, to suffer greater infant mortality rates,
and their children are more likely to be incarcerated, do sex
and drugs, and suffer sexual and emotional abuse. Again, this
is not to put down heroic single parents but only to say that
such a situation isn’t optimal, it’s not what we should want
for our kids.
God the Father teaches us presence; he made himself
present to us through His Son. We know the Father’s presence
through His sacrifice of love. Jesus taught us to pray the Our
Father, a prayer that pays loving respect to him who is above
us and a prayer that expresses the greatest confidence that God
our Father cares about us and is involved in our daily struggle
to survive, to find love, to be forgiven, and to overcome temptation.
Similarly, a father’s love for his children is expressed in the
sacrifices you make, whether in times of crisis or everyday life,
and in the physical, emotional, social and spiritual support
you lend to your children – including your adult children.
This,
too, is going against the cultural grain. Have you seen a positive
portrayal of fathers on TV lately? Family
Guy, the Simpsons,
American Dad, Two
and a Half Men? Feet of clay. Brain dead. Out
of control. It’s no better than the way priests are portrayed
in our culture. There’s no fatherly wisdom, only foibles.
You
don’t need a fancy sociological study to know that young people
want to spend time with their dads and benefit from doing the
simplest things together. We don’t need a study to show us that
this has to start early; it’s a little late once children hit
adolescence and adulthood. And we don’t need an expert to tell
us that that children depend on mom and dad’s love and that this
love has to be so solid that mom and dad – singly and together
– can respond to their children’s needs and at the same time
engender responsibility and virtue in them.
What’s really lacking
these days is a role model for adult manhood. Strength, maturity,
honesty, dignity, self-control, fair play, high expectations
for yourself and those you love, a keen sense of responsibility,
and ability to manage frustration and disappointment … these
are the things children look to us to learn. Boys will model
their manhood on their fathers. Girls will look for a man rather
like their fathers. I know that is pretty disconcerting when
you see who your kids are dating! But we have to give them an
idea of manhood & relationships that they can be proud of.
Conclusion
You’re here because you are taking your role
as husband and father seriously, because you are trying to live
your faith, because your hope for eternal life includes your
family, because your love is already generous and fatherly, like
God’s.
But you are also here because you and I need support
to live our vocations; because we are not lone rangers and rugged
individualists. Men must be courageous and but not foolhardy.
It’s always really been the case – but it’s especially true today
– that we can’t live our vocation without prayer and practical
help, and the friendship of other men trying to do the same.
126 years ago a Connecticut Parish priest understood that
same truth. No parish priest was every more fatherly or manly
than Father Michael J. McGivney. Men, women, and children all
experienced his fatherly care including a man who was condemned
to die. Father McGivney knew about the absence of fathers not
because the divorce rate was high or people lived together before
marriage, but rather because husbands often died prematurely
because of industrial accidents and other factors. He sought
a way for men to come together to lay claim to their faith and
to support one another in their role as spouse and father, He
sought a way for men to provide for their families in the event
of their death. And beginning with a few men in a church basement
in New Haven the Knights of Columbus today numbers over 1.7 million
men and provides more resources for being a good husband and
father than almost any other Catholic lay organization I can
think of.
There are parishes also that have great men’s groups
– I can think of quite of few in my own diocese – but the point
is that we cannot go it alone. I’d suggest that we pray and pray
earnestly to Father McGivney a Connecticut parish priest on the
road to sainthood, asking that we might be those fathers that
our families – mine and yours – need and those fathers that our
society so desperately needs.
Thank you for listening. God bless
you, God bless our Church, and God bless America!
Return to the Writings of Bishop
Lori
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