Priestly Fatherhood IPF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION TRAINING PROGRAM MUNDELEIN SEMINARY 2016
As always the boy is looking to explore, discover and see new things…these desires are only satisfied fully in a deep living relationship with God. The best persons to introduce this adventure to the boy are the men who have already suffered, and now enjoy, this exploration of the soul…namely spiritual fathers
“Only by praying together with his children can a father…exercising his royal priesthood, penetrate the innermost depths of his children’s hearts and leave an impression that future events will not be able to efface” (JPII, FC 60).
A good father, one who is open to both the moral and spiritual life, acts to protect the mystery of love that he freely entered and to which he committed himself: marriage and the family. This mystery is encountered in his love for his bride, his love for their children, and the gift of family-- a gift that arises out of two freedoms saying yes in trust of the God who authors all love.
The parish priest exists to offer his life in sacrifice so that Christ can continue to act in time, extending His salvific presence in and through sacramental signs. Primarily we call a priest Father because he lays down his life for those whom he loves, for those whom Christ loves, the children of God (Jn 1:12; 1 Cor 4:14–15; Gal 4:19). It has been said that fathers are more dispensable than mothers as it is in the man’s nature to give up his life for his family. So it is with priests as they allow the mystery of Christ’s own paternity to guide their level of sacrifice for the parish. Dads, who suffered grace and virtue, are more willing to take risks, put themselves in danger in order to protect their wives and children. That protectiveness, which is found in the natural order, establishes the paradigm for the protectiveness to which priest- fathers are called to as well.
Spiritual fathers Think of how courageous Maximillian Kolbe was…giving his life for the life of a family. This family forever called Kolbe their father in faith. Or the thousands who came to Ven. Solanus Casey’s funeral or St John Vianney’s funeral…. These spiritual children were “generated” by these priests, priests who gave their lives for the spiritual welfare of their people. And who can forget our own formidable spiritual father, John Paul II. It was estimated 2 billion spiritual children watched his funeral on TV.
Whether you are a priest or a dad, your life as a father is NOT about you; it is about the needs of others. The call received is one that leads into a life of sacrifice. The priest and the father are allies, encouraging one another to go the extra mile in serving the spiritual welfare of those under their care. John Paul II said it this way: “The father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance…his absence causes notable difficulties… [by his] witness he introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and His Church” (FC 25).
This witness is fundamentally a witness to the father’s commitment to love unto death. This is the crux of true availability to his wife and children. All husbands and fathers know that the immature and unhealed interior dispositions which serve to satisfy the ego (the residue of the bachelor life) can be purified in fidelity to the daily commitments of his vocation. This purification is developmental and relational in its core as the man allows the self-offering of Christ to define his interiority.
Protect the Mystery Fatherhood, in its spiritual core, is the gift of self donation precisely to protect and deepen that part of the mystery of Christ one has been given. To effectively foster holiness, the father of the family and the father of the parish must unite to EXPLICITLY FATHER TOGETHER. The emotionally and spiritually distant father must become a thing of the past. Assisting in this healing, the priest will restore and deepen the affective health of future seminarians as well as these sons will no longer go to seminary looking for a father but instead having been sent by one. Priests and Dads together assist a boy in coming to full, mature stature in Christ (Eph 4:13).
The Father loves Christ...Christ wants us to know we are loved…he wants us to receive the blessing of the Father as He did. ---------Receiving this blessing is a way of life ---------Christ received the “smile” of the Father (Balthasar) and tasted freedom from within their communion, within their relationship. This is the gift of the father…to initiate love.
The father is the authority of love who offers himself. Jesus has authority because he is the love of the father in the flesh. Christ reveals the Father’s love but St. Joseph also embodies this love as a model. In the New Testament Joseph is the first to reveal the Mystery of the Father’s love. He is the first to listen… to see… and protect… the mystery of Divine love as a man. He protects the mystery because of His fidelity to what He heard from God in a dream and what he saw in Mary.
A woman becomes a mother by touching, feeling a baby, having physical union with him or her. A man becomes a father by beholding and listening to the one who has union with the child already instruct him how to love. He becomes a father by beholding the child. The father is bound to his children by his gaze by his contemplation of their beauty. Jesus brought people into his fatherly love by first “seeing” them (Matt. 9:36-38 he saw the crowds with compassion, they were like sheep without a shepherd; lk 7:13-15,, matt 9:9;Matt 8:14-15), beholding them and then healing them. We only begin our road masculine maturation and holiness by first seeing the poor after allowing ourselves to be seen by the Father . “Adam, where are you?” Here is the gift of the father, the masculine…Did your Father behold you in love? Did you receive this love and therefore become mature in the ways of giving and receiving?
You are my beloved son… Your Father beholds you in love
Listen to the Bride Also, can you let the Bride (the church, Mary) teach you how to see? Teach you To behold your children in order act for their welfare, while simultaneously carrying within your heart the internalized love that you have for the Bride? Joseph built a house in Nazareth to protect the mystery, to protect the relationships, the communion of Mary, Jesus and himself all within the embrace of God the Father. Joseph himself ministered the mystery of God’s loving initiative to His Son Jesus, joseph protected the mystery by recalling the beauty of the Jesus’ mother’s Yes, about his own Yes to Mary and God, a yes secured by Mary’s own willingness to be Mother. -
The priest is irreplaceable just as one’s own father is irreplaceable. Others may do similar actions, but none can be present in certain actions in the way that only “my” father and only “our” priest can. A boy may say to the man who married his widowed or divorced mother, “Are you trying to be my dad?…no one can be my dad.” Certain presences – and only those presences – can mediate particular actions to the point of bearing their full fruit. A man from the parish congregation can lead intercessory prayers, share Scripture, and catechize, but if he dons a Chasuble, the Church would say, “Are you trying to be our priest? No one can replace our priest.”
No one can replace…you
T he male strength is service (Mt 10:43ff), endurance (Ex 34:6 longsuffering), and self-sacrifice (the Paschal Mystery Eph 5:25,32) . “Spousal love that finds its expression in continence for the kingdom of heaven must lead in its normal development to “fatherhood”…in the spiritual sense (i.e. fruitfulness of the holy Spirit…[Only mary and joseph who lived the mystery of the Christ’s birth became the first witnesses of a fruitfulness different from that of the flesh, that is, the fruitfulness of the Spirit n,75:2] in a way analogous to conjugal love, which matures in physical fatherhood and is confirmed in [him] precisely as spousal love.” TOB 76:3
When Christ calls a man away from marriage he does so only so that such a man is free in Christ to serve all marriages and families. Christ never asks priests not to be husbands and fathers. Instead He asks them to husband and father in the same embodied way He does: chastely and in a life of celibacy.
“Anyone wh who loves God in the dep epth ths o of f his h hea eart t has a already b bee een l loved b by G God. In fact, the m e mea easure o of a a man’s l love e for G God d depen ends on h how d w deep eply aware e he is of God’s love f e for him.” ” Diadochus of Photice, Treatise on Spiritual Perfection “I remember being on retreat and being asked to reflect on God the Father’s love for me. The memory that came to me in prayer was as a young boy, after bathing, running to my father to have him dry my hair. He would take the towel and rub my scalp so fast and hard that my head felt like it was on fire. My father, like most men, is not a man of many words or emotions, but in this simple act, his love was pouring out for me .”
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