Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and granddads!  I think it is very important for us to have a day to celebrate fatherhood.  One only has to look at how fathers are so often portrayed in today’s media to see that fatherhood is under attack.  Shows like Married With Children, Family Guy, and Two and A Half Men certainly paint men, and fathers, in a bad light.  In their role as husbands and fathers, men are often portrayed as insensitive to their wives, and the worse possible role-model for their children.  We have fallen a long way from Father Knows Best.  Such a negative portrayal of husbands and fathers often leave men feeling powerless.

    Let me put it bluntly:  this is all part of Satan’s plan.  Satan’s underlying plan is to remove our reliance on God, our benevolent Father.  To do this, Satan’s primary strategy is to damage and abolish human fatherhood. In away, we see this right from the beginning:  Original Sin is essentially the primordial rebellion against God’s fatherhood, a desire to remove fatherhood itself.

    Today’s attack on fatherhood has been very damaging.  Today 41% of children are born into unmarried homes; a 700% increase since 1950.  Today’s culture of self, encourages men to flee from the beautiful gift of fatherhood in pursuit of their own desire.

    Men, your presence and mission in the family is irreplaceable.  You need to step up and lovingly, patiently take up your God-given role as protector, provider, and spiritual leader of your home.  This is not a call to domination, but rather to loving leadership and gentle guidance.

    St. John Paul II said that fatherhood is essential to the flourishing of the world:  

“In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God (cf. Eph 3:15), a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family:  he will perform this task by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother, by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife (cf. Gaudium et spes, #52), by work which is never a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability, and by means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church” (Familiaris Consortio, #25).

Grandfathers are also of great importance.  It is no surprise that with the attack on fatherhood, our culture also expects less and shows great indifference to those men who have battled and who have tested wisdom to offer their children and grandchildren.  Much in society tells grandfathers to resign their post of fatherhood, that their time of influence is at an end, and they should just retire. This is rubbish; grandfathers matter greatly. Grandfathers are essential and should be viewed as treasured gifts to their families.  Grandfathers need to continue to be strong for their families, to share their wisdom with them, and to fight for them. As Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix writes in his apostolic exhortation to Catholic men, Into the Breach (copies of which will soon be available in the pamphlet racks in the back of the churches), “Let every grandfather be reminded that even when the routine of daily life may appear to be insignificant, we never know what great plans God has for the last years of our lives” (p. 38).

Again, happy Father’s Day to all the men of the parish.