p. 6The Father’s Vocation

His Stewardship

Father is a title of honor. Names, which come from God, indicate the nature of those who bear them. The name in the present case expresses the nature of the dignity of the father, his vocation, his office.

The duty of the father, like his dignity, is from God. God made him a father when he gave him his children. Children are the gift of God. “He hath made us,” says the Psalmist, “we have not made ourselves.” They are God’s own inheritance. “He is our God, and we are his people, sheep of his pasture.” “To the Lord belongs the earth and the fulness thereof.” Thy children, O father, are God’s children, much more and in a higher sense than they are yours. Do you love them? He loves them still more. Do you care for them? He cares for them still more. They belong in every way much more to him than to you. He has only intrusted them to you.

Why has he intrusted them to you? Ask why he created them. The answer is: that they may grow up and become truly good men and women; that they will, for their own welfare and that of their fellow-men, correspond truly and conscientiously to their vocation, and by their life on earth gain entrance to the kingdom of God in heaven. What a task! On their fulfilment of it depends the welfare of man on earth and his happiness for all eternity.

God intrusted your children to you that you might enable them to fulfil this task; that you might assist them to become good men and women, and qualify them for their God-given vocation; that their life on earth may be devoted not only to their temporal welfare, but also to their eternal salvation.

This is the task, the charge, which the Lord has imposed on you, and if you do not perform the work which he has laid out for you, and care for your children according to the will and design of God, they will not attain their eternal destiny. They will not become good men and women if you do not do your part to that end. They will not find their vocation on earth, or correspond to its requirements, if you do not lead them to it. They will not be happy on earth, and will with difficulty gain heaven if you do not accomplish God’s will in regard to them. It can be truly said: “Thy children have been given into thy hands.”

There are exceptions to the rule. Children to whom the father has not performed his duty, or to whom his neglect of duty and bad example have been a detriment, have become good men and women and gained salvation. God himself, by his special grace and assistance, came to their rescue, supplied what the father failed in, and compensated for the injury the unnatural father had inflicted on them. But these are exceptional and rare cases. The rule holds, that children by whom the father (and mother) have not done their duty do not become good men and women—do not, or do not in the ordinary way, obtain heaven. The decrees of the Lord are inscrutable to weak human understanding. It may be asked, Why does not the Lord do for all children what he does for a few neglected ones? A perfect knowledge of the designs of God is not always granted to us; but the fact remains that children who are neglected or corrupted by their parents remain neglected and corrupted.

Does not every man experience something of this kind? If he strives to become a good man, to find and fulfil his vocation, and to obtain temporal and eternal welfare, God will in all these efforts doubtless do the greater part by his grace and assistance. But he himself must put his own hand to the work in each particular case. When a good work is to be done, temptations to be overcome, faults to be corrected, virtues to be acquired, he must first make use of the gifts and faculties which God has given him. It is only after, and in so far as he has done this, that God ordinarily comes to his assistance by his grace to supply what is needed. But he does this only when by prayer and other pious works he is prevailed on to do so. “Help thyself,” says the proverb, “and God will help thee;” that is, do your part,¹1To do this man of course needs grace. and then you may hope that God will do his part if you ask him. But fail to make use of the gifts, graces, and opportunities which God has given you to free yourself from your faults, to acquire virtue, to gain eternal life, and God will not come to your assistance to supply what is needed, even if he could. You continue in your faults, remain without virtue, and are lost.

Thus it is in the mysterious decrees of the infinite wisdom, holiness and love of God. Man must—so is the decree—he must, as far as possible, be the promoter of his own happiness, as God is the cause of what he himself is and has. Man’s happiness will be all the greater when it is the result of his own efforts in conjunction with the grace of God. It is in the providence of God that the welfare of one man is due in a degree to the salutary influence of others. God has so created men that they do not stand isolated from each other, but being intimately united, like the members of the body, they form a great whole. Hence, when one person wishes to attain his temporal and eternal welfare he should not be left to struggle alone, but that he may the better succeed he should be assisted by others, and he in turn should lend them a helping hand.

It is easy here to discover the gracious design of God. By this means the efforts of many make the welfare of each more certain and complete. The Lord at the same time designed, no doubt, that all should be united by a bond of holy love, so that the elect in eternity might have the happy consciousness of having assisted so many others to eternal life.

Be this as it may, it is certainly true that the welfare of the individual is determined in many ways by the salutary influence of others, and that without this influence he would gain with difficulty, or not gain at all, the desired end. To withhold help, consolation, support, advice, direction, and salutary influence from a man, is to leave him destitute of what is necessary to him to attain his destiny, and he is lost. The Lord does not interfere to supply the defect.

Well, nowhere is this in so high a degree true as in the case of children. They are in every way dependent on the salutary influence of the father and mother. If these are not careful to do their part, to make good men and women of their children, to lead them to salvation, they will all too easily yield to evil influences and be lost. Ask those unfortunates who have missed their vocation in life, or who have not complied with its requirements—living perhaps in sin and vice, and who in consequence have known no true happiness in life—ask them how this sad state of things came about.

They will almost always refer it to parents who did not do their duty by them. If it were permitted in the world beyond to ask this question of those unfortunates who are doomed to eternal perdition, how many among them would attribute the principal cause of their damnation to their parents!

Behold then, O father, your task, your mission. It is in the plan of divine wisdom that man comes into existence as a helpless infant; that his corporal life, like his spiritual and higher life, should develop from small beginnings to ever higher degrees of perfection. He therefore needs, while his twofold life is developing, support and help, a guide, a tutor, that he may reach the destined degree of perfection, as the young and tender tree needs support and care while coming to maturity.

It is for this reason that God has given parents to man, particularly during the time of his childhood and youth. As man in his infancy and youth is not able to procure what is necessary to support and prolong life the father must procure it for him. As he, ignorant and inexperienced, does not understand his vocation and welfare, the father, wiser and more experienced, must point out the right way and incline him towards it. As he, weak in body as well as in mind and will, can with difficulty continue in the right way, the father, matured by experience, confirmed in correct principles, and strong in the Christian spirit, must guide him to the right way and compel him to persevere in it.

Thus is the child, the youth, the maiden, everywhere and in all circumstances, depending on the father and mother. They almost always become what the parents make them. Can there be a greater, more important, more responsible duty than that of a father and mother?

The Qualifications of a Father

As the Lord established this order, and committed his children in so great a degree to the care of their parents, he has also taken care to enable the parents to perform their important task. He therefore implanted in the heart of the father and mother that powerful sentiment of paternal and maternal love, that thereby they might be impelled, involuntarily, to care for their children. But that which the natural sentiment of love dictates to parents the Lord has imposed upon them as the holiest of duties. How terrible are his threats against parents who neglect their duty; how great the rewards he promises to good parents!—threats and promises which should spur them on to a more faithful performance of their duties.

God has in like manner so constituted the hearts of children that a natural tendency impels them to meet their parents half way in their efforts to instruct and direct them. Hence this sentiment of love and attachment towards father and mother in every young heart, this susceptible, credulous, open heart for all that the parents say or do, this disposition to imitate them in all things, this willingness to obey their commands,—all these dispositions God has implanted in the young heart. Here also, as in the case of the parents, God gives force to this natural tendency by precept and commandment. With what emphasis he has imposed upon children the duty of respect, love, and obedience to their parents! How has he at all times given force to his commandment by rewarding good and punishing wicked children!

While in all this the Lord had directly in view the welfare of children, which to so great an extent depends on fulfilling their duties to their parents, he also wished thereby to assist the parents the more easily to fulfil their duties to their children.

Behold then, O father, how much God relies on you fulfilling your duties to your children in compliance with his holy will! The more God has done to assure the performance of those duties the more important they should appear in your eyes.

The August Nature of a Father’s Vocation

If more were necessary to show the value and sacredness of the father’s vocation attention can be directed to the sublimity of this vocation. For what could God intrust to feeble man more precious than a man?

A man! Have you ever comprehended what a man really is? A man is the most glorious work of the hand of the Lord. God called all things into being by a simple act of his holy will; he said: “Let it be made,” and it was made. But when he would call man into being, the adorable persons of the most holy Trinity took council together as it were: “Let us make man!” And so “God made man in his own image, in his likeness made he him.” Behold, O father, God has intrusted this glorious work of his hands to you as often as he has blessed you with children!

And how dear to him are your children! They are his children also, much more and in a higher sense than they are yours. He loves them more than you love them. “With an eternal love hath he loved them.” For them he sacrificed his divine Son. And how dearly does that divine Son, the children’s friend, love them. He gave up his life for them. And the Holy Ghost! He has in holy baptism taken possession of them that he may dwell and work in them as in his temple. Behold, the triune God has intrusted these most beloved children to your care, O father. You must assist him to lead these, his and thy children, to salvation. He has chosen you as his co-laborer in this holy work. O sublime calling, to be a co-laborer with God in the salvation of his children!

And what is at stake? It is a question of the well-being of your children. If only their temporal welfare was concerned how great even that would appear! How important that man even here on earth should lead a happy life! If then it were nothing more than this of what great importance it must appear to every good father. But it is a question of eternal happiness or misery. It is intrusted to the hands of the father to rescue his children from eternal perdition, and by bringing them up properly enable them to enjoy unending happiness in the world to come. Can a greater or a higher trust be imagined? It was to rescue men from perdition and lead them to eternal life that the Lord Jesus did not hesitate to accept the greatest sufferings and torments, and even to devote himself to a most ignominious death. This infinite price would have been paid for the soul of every child. O sublime task of the father in relation to his children!

Of all the duties which a father has to fulfil here on earth none can be even remotely compared to that which he owes to his children. It is, in fact, the highest occupation, the most important business of his life.

On his faithful and proper fulfilment of this duty depends, more than on anything else, his own welfare in time and in eternity. What pleasure and consolation will good parents receive, even in this world, from their sons and daughters whom they have properly brought up. Are not good children the joy, the honor, the pride, and highest happiness of their parents? But on the contrary, what sorrow, grief and affliction thoughtless parents experience from children perverted through their fault.

This is the order appointed by divine justice, a foretaste of what eternity has in store for them. How great will be the responsibility of a father who, in the hour of his judgment, must acknowledge that he mistook or neglected the highest and most important duty which God had imposed upon him on earth, and that through this neglect, want of principle, and bad example, those whom he should have brought up good men and women have grown up in evil ways—that those whom he should have led to salvation have been lost! And, if he has not blotted out his great sin by true repentance, what a judgment, what a retribution awaits him! Is it not alone a sufficient hell for a father to be compelled to stand at that judgment seat surrounded by his own children and hear their terrible reproaches, maledictions, and imprecations?

Reflect, O father, on this, and strive with all your power to be a faithful father to your children. Who can find words to describe the rewards that await a good father in eternity? “Well done, good and faithful servant.” These gracious words will be lovingly addressed by the Lord from his throne of judgment to fathers and mothers who have brought up their children properly and secured the salvation of those children whom God so dearly loves—to those fathers and mothers who assisted in realizing the yearnings of his holy heart, that the souls for whom he shed his precious blood and offered up his life might gain eternal happiness.

Yes, unspeakably great is the reward prepared for them by him who does not let a cup of water go unrewarded. Will it alone not be heaven to such a father to have his children about him in heaven, to see them eternally happy and know that he, with the help of God, was the cause of their happiness? Truly, the beautiful words of St. Augustine in reference to the elect are here realized: “Each rejoices in the happiness of the other as in his own; as many heavens as brethren;” “the father rejoices in the happiness of his children as in his own; as many heavens as children.” And truly happy that father when his children bear witness before heaven that they owe their happiness, next to God, to their father and mother.

Thus everything unites to induce fathers to do their duty to their children and to fulfil that duty in the most perfect manner.