Father’s Day Message, 2007
Recently, a middle-aged man, we will call him John, was contemplating an upcoming Father’s Day. There had been some changes in his life. The kids were grown and out of the house. His company had been downsizing, and John had accepted early retirement. But his wife Nancy would have to take a job so that their income would stay the same and their health benefits would be sufficient. How would John and Nancy adjust to their new situation? How would their roles change in family life?
John decided that he would try and be a loving and considerate husband. But soon after Nancy went back to work, John noticed that the quality of her housework had deteriorated. He decided he would not yell at her about it. Also, when Nancy got back from a day of work, about the same time John returned from fishing or hunting, Nancy would always say that she had to rest for a half an hour before starting dinner. John was very hungry but didn’t yell at her. John just asked Nancy to wake him when dinner was ready.
In earlier days, Nancy always did the dishes right after dinner. Now they sat on the kitchen table for hours after they finished dinner. John thought he was being very considerate by reminding Nancy several times that the dishes weren’t getting done by themselves and that she really shouldn’t leave them before going to bed. John even said that he understood that now that she was older, she seemed to get tired so much more quickly.
The washer and dryer John and Nancy have was in the basement. Nancy told John that sometimes she was so tired after work that she just can’t make another trip down those stairs. John decided not to make a big issue of it, so long as Nancy finished the laundry the next night. That is of course, unless John needed something ironed for the Monday lodge meeting, or the Wednesday and Saturday poker club, or the Tuesday and Thursday bowling nights. By being more tolerant with Nancy, John reasoned that this gives her more time after work to shampoo the dog, vacuum, and dust. By being more tolerant with Nancy, John reasoned Nancy would have more time to gut and scale the fish at a more leisurely pace if John had a good day fishing.
John noticed that Nancy was starting to complain a little, saying that it is difficult for her to find time to pay the monthly bills during her lunch hours. In spite of her complaining, John told Nancy to stretch out paying the bills over several days. He even suggested that missing lunch completely now and then wouldn’t hurt her any since she was not getting any slimmer. When doing simple jobs, John noticed that Nancy took more rest periods. She had to take a break when she was half finished mowing the yard.
John told himself not to embarrass Nancy when she takes these little breaks. John told her to fix herself a nice big cold glass of freshly squeezed lemonade and just sit for a while. And as long as she is making one for herself, she may as well make one for John too. Then, when Nancy takes her break by the hammock in which John is laying, she can talk with him until he falls asleep.
John felt quite proud of himself. It was not easy, John thought, to be this considerate of your wife as she grows older. Nancy apparently felt differently. On Father’s Day, John was found strangled in his hammock. Upon hearing the details of the case, the police decided not to press charges against Nancy!
Today is Father’s Day. It is a day when fathers are honored for their many contributions to the lives of their wives and children. And this is as it should be. I remember with great fondness and love my own father, who passed away more than a decade ago. He was not only a great father but he was a great friend. Together with my mother, their Catholic faith and their passing it along to me are the main reasons I stand before you as a deacon today. My wife Lois recently lost her father just a few weeks ago. They had a very loving and close relationship. She was daddy’s little girl, and my father-in-law, together with my mother-in-law gave me the greatest gift a man could ever receive: the gift of their daughter who has put up with me now for almost 29 years.
It is also a great joy to be a father myself, and what a gift from God it has been for both Lois and I to raise our two wonderful children. I am sure many of you have similar memories and experiences. Thank God for all that has been accomplished by fathers in our lives, and in the history of our country.
Nonetheless, it is also true that how one measures up as a successful father, what maleness means in today’s society is clearly changing, and often not for the better. Fathers are under growing pressure as professionals to be constantly reinventing themselves to be competitive in a brutal job market. The days of a man spending decades working in the same place are over. Young men who enter today’s job market will change jobs at least five or six times over the course of their careers, provided they can find employment without intermittent job loss.
The pressure on men to be breadwinners is daily and can crush the pride of a man. Globalization has shattered job security, and union busting, worker intimidation, and global trade patterns that drive down wages and lead to business closings threaten economic justice in this country. This has increased pressure on employers not to provide health insurance for their employees or to provide coverage that is not sufficient for families. And so men and women both work to make ends meet. This raises issues of daycare, childcare, shortages of time to spend with each other in the family unit and concerns about family and faith formation. And in the process the kinds of very practical issues humorously portrayed in the story of John and Nancy are very real indeed. Male and female roles are changing and pressures on families grow. How do we as Christians keep our spiritual values in a secular world that often viciously assaults them?
The first way it is done is by never, never, never, letting God out of your life. Men are often wired to think that they have to solve the problems of their lives by themselves. In a foolish belief that they control events, a mistake a woman would never make, men can believe that prayer is something for women and children for old widows or for men who are sissies. But time spent with God in prayer, the sacraments, the Mass, and Scripture is always time well spent. And God is always there; ready to clear the confusion and be merciful and forgiving even to clueless men like the John in our story.
The pressures placed on fathers to keep their families safe and secure should never crowd out the one source that is always there to offer us joy and peace. By surrendering to God our troubles, challenges, and crises and asking for God’s help, we can discern what we need to do to preserve our families values and needs. A life based on service to God and others is the path to salvation in the next life, but it is also the path to joy and peace in this one.
Secondly, in dealing with the challenges of today’s fatherhood, we also have the consolation of Christian truth. That truth is that we have been made in God’s image and likeness. God does have a plan for the human race, for both men and women. It is a plan by which all of us can return to God through an ever-deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. And that relationship is about service-based love to one another. We need only look to Scripture and the 2000-year teaching tradition of the church to discern the proper role of maleness. Scripture and Catholic tradition tell us that the nature of human fatherhood is related directly to the nature of God himself. God the Father gave us all life. Human fathers also give life.
But the Judeo-Christian God is a tender loving God. God the Father cares for his people. He pays the ultimate price for his children by laying down the life of His only begotten son, God in the person of Jesus. And so fathers are called to be tender and loving and to lay down their lives for their wives and children. The covenant relationship that God has with his people is unique to the Judeo-Christian heritage of faith. That heritage stresses that God showers his graces upon his people. And so Christian fathers are called to that same covenant with their wives and children, a covenant that also emulates the love of Jesus Christ for his church, making the family the domestic church with a father at its head.
But the spiritual authority of men includes being able to respond to loving feedback and shared responsibility from women and even children. Women as well as men, St. Paul points out this morning in his letter to the Galatians, are called to live in the spirit of Christ. Fathers need and are called to accept loving advice about how best to act on and carry out their fatherly responsibilities.
Complementarity is critical to a successful marriage and family life. Adam had everything in the Garden of Eden. Yet Scripture says he was unhappy, because he needed a partner that would complement him and make him whole. This gender-based partnership of mutual love is essential to the happiness of males as well as females and without such an order; peace in human affairs is impossible, not just at home but in our society as well.
In this regard, Jesus in his public life promoted and stressed the dignity of women. While women were not apostles, they were clearly disciples and supporters as we read about today in our Gospel from Luke. We can imagine that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and others did more than just the dishes. They were sources of financial support and sources of the incredible wisdom that women always bring to any table, not just the one in the kitchen.
Men and women complement each other. Men try to be clever, but wisdom is for women (wisdom is always referred to as she in Scripture). Men’s minds are analytic, women’s are holistic. Women see the forest, men see the trees. Men’s desire to act is leavened by woman’s wisdom in discerning whether action will do more harm than good. Men talk to a subject, women communicate about a subject.
Women humanize men. They often demonstrate greater human dignity in the face of masculine rowdiness and contain and prevent that rowdiness from getting out of control and doing real damage in human affairs. Because women are often more vulnerable to the effects of public authority, they have every right, in the teachings of the Church, to participate fully in public life, seeking economic justice that is legally-based and enforceable, and counseling their husbands to do the same.
Additionally, while gender complementarity is a part of Christian truth, in some spheres gender mutuality is also perfectly appropriate. Contrary to John’s view in our story, there is no special female way to cook or clean, or run errands, or change diapers, or feed the kids or drive them to a whole range of activities. Male authority, when exercised with dominion not domination, with sacrifice not selfishness is ultimately a strength in human affairs and not a repressive force. While on this earth, Jesus was given all authority over the world. But he did not lord it over anyone; he was in fact the ultimate lord of love who gave up everything for those he loved. And fathers are called to do the same.
Jesus reminds us in our Gospel today that fathers and mothers, men and women are all called to deny their own desires for the benefit of God and others. The authority given by God to men is a stewardship of the world that is to be shared with women, a service-based love of God and others that takes place in spheres of both the profound and mundane. It is the key to the building of a new earth filled with joy and peace in this life and a new heaven for both men and women in the next.