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The Image of God the Father in the Home

By Very Rev. Fr. Casimir Puskorius, CMRI

My dear parishioners, in last Sunday’s sermon I talked about two words: Our Father. Today I will talk about only one of those words: Father. Instead of focusing on our Father in Heaven, I want to speak about fatherhood on earth. The image we have of our Father in Heaven is determined in great part by the image we have of our fathers here on earth. This is a fact of life. I am reminded of what St. Therese of Lisieux wrote to her father from her Carmelite convent: “My dear father, when I think of you, I naturally think of my Father in Heaven.” Isn’t that one of the highest praises a child could give a father? No wonder some people called her father a saint. By that one sentence, St. Therese shows us that her father had achieved a tremendous goal. By raising her well with love, with discipline and with his Catholic faith, he had impressed upon her mind an image of her Heavenly Father. How? By being a good father himself. He really worked at it; he sanctified himself as a father.

I’m going to be a little direct today with you fathers, because you need to understand the magnificence of your role, the critical function that you have in your family. What you must do is nothing less than trying to replicate the goodness of our Heavenly Father in your life. If you do not , you are failing in what you need to do for your family.

As we look around ourselves today, we see many good fathers. Sadly, however, there are also many bad fathers — fathers who badly neglect the upbringing of their children, and even fathers who abuse or abandon their children. These are tremendous hurts. Those who have suffered from such things certainly have my sincere support and prayers.

This is not a matter of judging; it is a fact of life. These things happen. Some people have had bad experiences with the father images in their lives — fathers who should have communicated the goodness of God to them, but did not. Children whose fathers have neglected or hurt them will often find it difficult to look up to our Heavenly Father and have a good relationship with Him. But let me remind you that even in these cases, the grace of God is powerful enough to help solve these problems and difficulties. Pray for those fathers. It is never too late in this life for them to amend their ways and to start exercising fatherhood as they should.

Remember, too, that a father never stops being a father, just as a mother never stops being a mother. You may not be raising young children at age 60, but you will still be a father to your grown-up children. They still need you and look up to you.

The point I want to emphasize most is that being a father means being a spiritual leader in your family. Away with this notion that piety is for old women! Piety is for everyone. I can’t think of anything more manly than for a man to talk to his Father in Heaven — that’s what prayer is. I can’t think of many things more manly than for a man to talk to his Mother in Heaven, just as he would talk to his mother on earth, and respect her and honor her and love her.

I’m going to establish a premise here without spending a lot of time trying to prove it, because I think you will see the truth of it: that the father is the “priest” of the family. Fathers, you are the closest person to being a “priest” for your wife and children. You are the spiritual leader of the home. If you are not leading your family closer to God, if you are not leading your family in prayer, then there is a vacuum in your family, a lack of spiritual leadership. This is something that no one else can do. Yes, the mother can make the children pray, but she can’t do it the way the father can. He has the role of being the leader, the head of the family, and if he doesn’t lead the family in prayer, then there is a vacuum, a void, in the family.

I can’t emphasize this enough, my dear brethren. Fathers, do you lead your families in the daily Rosary? You need to form that habit in your children. When was the last time, fathers, that you saw your children go to confession because you brought them to church with you when you came to confession? Your children attend the Stations of the Cross on school days during Lent, but do you bring them to Stations on Fridays when there is no school? Do you bring them to make a Holy Hour, or maybe even two, during the Forty Hours?

I am not talking about sinful neglect here. It’s not a sin to not attend Stations, but this I do know, my dear brethren: if we don’t try to do the “extras,” we may lose what we have. If fathers don’t lead their children in doing the “extras,” the children grow up indifferent to the Faith. Their thinking will be, “If it’s not important to Dad, it’s not important.” You see, fathers and mothers — and all those in positions of authority — much more is “caught” than taught. Yes, we have to give sermons, we have to instruct, but what we do always goes much further than what we say. If we do not come to church except on Sundays and holydays, our example shows that we do not consider these Masses and devotions important enough to attend.

My dear brethren, what I fear so much is a repetition of the problems Catholics fell into during the 50’s and 60’s, problems which led to the disaster of Vatican II. I will have to blame us clergy most of all, as a matter of fact — because the clergy are the leaders. From what I have read, many people were only going through the motions of being Catholic, content with doing the minimum. And so when this easy new religion came along in the aftermath of Vatican II, the vast majority followed it. I would even say that Vatican II happened because of a void of spiritual fatherhood on the part of the clergy and of fathers. Again, I am not trying to judge any one in saying that — far be it from me to do that! But in general, the void was there. After Vatican II the modernists started introducing gimmicks to keep the people going to church. If there had been spiritual leadership, spiritual fatherhood, if fathers had been so grateful that they would go to the church to kneel in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, they would never have tolerated such gimmicks as communion in the hand, standing for communion, dancers in the church, guitar masses. If more of these men had reflected upon Jesus scourged, bruised, battered, falling beneath the Cross, they would have been so overwhelmed with gratitude for what He suffered for their sins that they wouldn’t have needed entertainment to keep them in church.

So my dear brethren, if we don’t appreciate and strive to do more than the bare minimum, we too may lose the basics, the essentials. We don’t want our children to grow up indifferent to the “extras” because it’s that generosity that will really make them better. But we’ve got to really work at the basics.

My prayer is that you will come to realize more and more the magnitude of your calling. As I said earlier, you are the image of our Heavenly Father in your family. If you are not spiritual, if you do not try to live up to that image, your children will struggle to understand their Heavenly Father Whom they can’t see. You have to make Him real to them by how you live your Catholic life, how you put Him first, how you set the example and do the extras. Your children learn a great deal from you; they count on you.

On my part, I encourage you, I support you. Be strong fathers; be loving fathers. By strong I do not mean in any way that you should be unjust or harsh or cruel. Even when you discipline, you must do so with love, just as when God disciplines us, He does so with infinite love. Our hats are off to you fathers. Be the leaders that you need to be for your wives, for your children. If at times you feel inadequate, remember that the grace of God is all powerful — it can make any one of us a saint in a moment if only we cooperate with it. Let us pray for our fathers as they strive to fulfill the awesome role God has given them that they may live up to this high ideal. May God bless our fathers.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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