The Christian Father: What He Should Be, and What He Should Do

Introduction

The appearance of “The Christian Father” in an English dress we hail with sincerest pleasure, and we doubt not that it will meet a warm welcome from the English-speaking community. Its companion volume, “The Christian Mother,” has met with well-deserved favor, and has found its way into many a Christian home, to cheer and to bless it. “The Christian Father” must be equally popular and equally beneficial, for it is equally admirable for its practical good sense, winning simplicity, and deeply religious lessons. It is no mere ideal father we have here, aspiring after unattainable or fanciful saintliness. It is a father such as God intended all fathers to be, such as should and might be found at the head of every Christian family. It is a genuine Christian father faithfully discharging the obligations of his state and sanctifying himself in the ordinary every-day duties of life. If in the family and in society God’s holy providence has allotted to the mother a place which only the Christian mother can fill, with much more reason may we say the same of the father. A father, becoming under God the principle of existence to others, shares with the great Creator and Father of all the noblest prerogative of which a creature is capable, that of paternity or fatherhood. The father actually holds the place of God, and exercises an authority subordinate only to that of God, over his children, and in return he rightfully challenges and instinctively receives respect and honor approximating the honor paid to God himself. With inborn reverence and confiding trust the child looks up to the father as the sum of all power, knowledge, and perfection. Great indeed, then, must be the responsibilities, most sacred the duties, which God and nature impose on the father. He must try hard to realize the child’s ideal and put on the character of Him whom he represents. It is a mysterious but undeniable fact that children are left entirely in the hands and, we may say, at the mercy of the parents who beget them, for life, physical constitution, native character, and moral training. To the father, as head of the family, and invested with God-like powers and divine rights, it is given to exercise a controlling influence; he shapes the destinies, he moulds the characters of his offspring. As a general rule, children are what their father makes them. Like begets like. But the father not only transmits to his offspring a great resemblance to himself in form and feature, temperament, constitution, and natural disposition, he moreover unconsciously communicates to his children his own habits of thought, his likes and dislikes, his religious sentiments and moral principles, whilst his children in after-years recall his examples, his actions, and his words, by which to rule and square their own conduct and lives. The Christian father will naturally instil Christian habits, impart a moral tone, and infuse a religious spirit into his family; and as the family is the foundation of society, we must make the father truly Christian would we reform society, Christianize the land, or make the people moral. How can Christianity flourish; how can public or private virtue prevail; how can morality exist among the people, if fathers who have the moulding of the future generations, the training and education of children, under their almost exclusive control, are unprincipled or immoral men, unchristian, irreligious, or sensual? Give us, on the contrary, Christian fathers, and we shall soon have well-reared families, happy and virtuous homes.

None are more alive to the pressing need of good Christian fathers than the ministers of religion, whose calling brings them so often into contact with wretchedness and sin.

This, doubtless, it was that impelled the Rev. W. Cramer, a holy and learned man, who for years has been the educator, counsellor, and guide of the Clergy of the Diocese of Münster, to publish the excellent little work “The Christian Father” now for the first time given to the English-speaking public. He draws a life-like portrait of the true Christian father, shows the sublimity of his calling, explains his duties and obligations, the difficulties and dangers to which he is exposed, the graces which he needs for the sanctification of himself and his household, and the means which he must employ in order to secure those needed graces. May God bless the good Priest for this little gem of a book! May it find its way into every Christian home in the land, and may every Catholic father in America exemplify in his life “The Christian Father”!

✠ S. V. RYAN, Bishop of Buffalo. Feast of the Circumcision, 1883.

✦

The Name of Father

“FATHER:”—one of the first words uttered by infant lips, the first fruit, as it were, of the precious gift of speech, offered in honor of the Father in heaven and the father on earth, to whom we are indebted for existence and language.

Father: what a venerable name! It was pronounced from all eternity to express the mysterious relationship existing between the first two persons of the Deity. When God called men into being they addressed him by the name of “Father.” And such he was; for he made them his children, and as his children he endowed them with the highest gifts.

And when by sin they lost this high privilege of being children of God, he himself, in the second person of the Trinity, came down upon earth and restored to them that holy prerogative. This was the precious fruit of the life and works, the suffering and death of the Redeemer. “As many as believed in him, to them he gave power to become children of God.” God was, and is again in the fullest sense of the word, “Father” of all those who in the holy church are reborn children of God.

Our divine Redeemer taught us to know him again as Father. He called him “Our heavenly Father”—“Our Father who art in heaven.” In like manner should his faithful disciples, following his example, address him when they pray, as “Our Father who art in heaven.” God, the Father of men! As many as are born again of water and the Holy Ghost are his children, and he is their Father.

How justly is this title his! Is it not to him that all men owe existence and life? And if by baptism they have acquired a supernatural sonship to God, is it not he who in the person of the Holy Ghost created them anew? It is he who must support and lead to a higher perfection that natural and supernatural life which was given by him, if it is to exist and arrive at perfection at all. He is in truth the Father of men, and we are his children.

But he has not willed to appropriate to himself exclusively this fatherhood, or the august title of Father. As he stamped upon all men the image of his divine nature and made them in his own likeness, so, according to the decree of his divine wisdom and love, his fatherhood should have its image in humanity; a certain number among men should participate in the privileges and prerogatives of his paternal dignity; they also should be fathers and have children. As to him so also to them should children owe their being. As he created his children in his natural and supernatural likeness, so also should fathers communicate to their children a part of their material as well as spiritual nature. As he by never failing grace seeks to lead his children to ever higher degrees of perfection, so also should fathers, by salutary influence, take part in this work of sanctification and perfection. As he from all eternity has the happy consciousness that all those who are by him and with him eternally happy owe their happiness and salvation to him, so should the human father also, when in heaven, have the consciousness that by fulfilling his paternal duties he has assisted his children to gain the happiness of heaven.

Every human father, then, is an image of the great Father in heaven, his divinely appointed representative on earth. “All paternity in heaven and on earth is from God,” says the Apostle. And what he says of worldly authority is in a higher sense true in reference to a father and to the paternal dignity. “There is no power but from God, and those who are, are ordained of God.” Now the father is an image and representative of the great Father who is in heaven; he therefore partakes of the prerogative of the divine fatherhood; he stands above his children; he is their lord and ruler; he has the title and right to honor, obedience, and subjection on the part of his children. They owe him reverence, obedience, and love as they owe them to God their heavenly Father, and are bound in consequence to render them. These words of the Lord have a particular value for fathers in relation to their children: “He that hears you, hears me; he that despises you, despises me.” Could the great heavenly Father have honored more highly the human father, his representative on earth, than when he gave the commandment which refers to him the next place to those which refer to his own divine person? He also honored fathers (and mothers) in the fact that the commandment which refers to them is the only one which he accompanies with a positive promise: “Honor thy father (and thy mother) that it may be well with thee.” What is more sublime than the expressions of the Holy Scriptures in which the Lord in manifold ways promises his heavenly blessings to children who obey their father (and mother)? On the other hand, what is more terrible than the curse which he utters against children who disobey, and are wanting in reverence to their father (and mother)? And have not these utterances been verified in sacred history? The choicest blessings for good children, and the most terrible afflictions for wicked sons and daughters. What the Scripture relates is proved by every-day experience.

And what follows from all this? Does it not follow that since God has imposed on children so imperatively the duty of obedience to their fathers, he must hold the dignity of father in the highest esteem? How venerable then is the name of father, surrounded as it is with honor by God himself!

And how honorable is fatherhood and the name of father when we look into the father’s heart! How has God formed the father’s heart? He made it after his own paternal heart. His heart has an infinite love for his children, an infinite desire to make them happy and to lead them to their true welfare. And such is the nature which the Lord has given to every father’s heart. Such is the unconscious tendency of every uncorrupted father’s heart. Find if you can a man whose heart, if God has blessed him with children, does not instinctively impel him to do everything in his power to make them happy. The world would call him an unnatural father who would not yield to this impulse. It is only in a state of barbarism that such a father is possible. Behold then the father’s heart.

But who has so constituted the father’s heart that when he becomes a father he is animated by these natural emotions and sentiments? It is a gift from the great heart of the heavenly Father to his image and representative on earth, a gift from the divine to the human father.

How noble does not this constitution of the father’s heart make the name of father appear! God himself has made the father’s heart what it is.

If the name of father is not revered, if it is sometimes despised and contemned, the reason is unfortunately found in the manner in which the high dignity is exposed by many fathers to desecration and dishonor. Without feeling or thought for the paternal dignity and the great obligations of their vocation, indifferent, nay, averse, to its duties, they disregard all those noble characteristics which distinguish the good father and retain nothing but an ugly caricature of a degenerate one.

Let us imagine a father who answers to the idea of paternal dignity. Picture to yourself a man whose life presents a model of a truly good father—who could withhold from him his profoundest admiration and respect? How highly is the name of father venerated by the children of such a father! how honored, treasured, and loved! Their whole heart is occupied in thoughts of him; absent from him, they long to be with him; his presence, his look, his word gives them delight. His memory remains uneffaceable in their hearts even after he has long rested in his grave. Is there anything more edifying, more consoling than the memory of a truly good father?

Venerable then is the name of father. It is used in all the relations and conditions of life to denote the good, the most excellent, the best. What an honorable evidence of respect for the master of a house when those of his household address him by the name of “father!” What a commendation when it is said of the head of an institution or congregation: He is a father to the institution, he is a father to the people. And can there be a greater honor for a president, king, or emperor than to be called with truth the “Father of his Country?”

Or let us look into the ecclesiastical state. When the priest exercises that most important function of his ministry in which all the care and solicitude of his heart is brought into action, and in which the faithful are accustomed to give him the highest proof of their confidence, he is called the “Father Confessor.” When the priest takes especial care of a soul which he wishes to lead onward in the way of perfection he is called the “Spiritual Father.” Bishop and priest who perform their high and onerous duties with particular love and care are called father of the diocese, father of the congregation. And for him who holds the highest dignity in the holy Church, for the head, the representative of Jesus Christ, no more beautiful and excellent name has been found than that of “father;” Pope means “father,” and our whole heart goes out to him when we say “Our holy Father.”

Honorable then is the name of father on earth. Will it not be honorable also in heaven? That mysterious sign which the elect receive in baptism and confirmation, and which the priest receives at ordination, will bear witness that they are children of God, and be their glory in heaven. Who can doubt that in like manner the dignity of father will be an everlasting glory for those who have been clothed with it here on earth?

Behold, Christian father, what thou art. The name of father is honored by both God and man, venerated on earth and glorified in heaven. Thou bearest it; it will, if thou bearest it worthily, be thy honor, thy happiness, and thy salvation in time and eternity.

Let your heart rejoice in the paternal dignity. Let the name of father be your pride. Let it be your ambition at all times and in every manner to prove yourself worthy of it.

✦