Defining Fatherhood
One
The fundamental role of a father
Everyone knows a father’s role is incredibly important, but what exactly is that role? What is the essence of being a dad, of being a good father?
If you’re a dad or a grandfather, how should you organize your life, your responsibilities?
One of the best ways to find out what something should be is to find the supreme example.
In the case of fatherhood, that’s easy: the supreme example of Fatherhood is God the Father, the First Person of the Trinity.
So what is the chief characteristic of God the Father, as revealed by Jesus? That should give us some indication of what the chief characteristic of a human father should be.
Two
Giving good gifts
In the Gospels, it is a constant theme that the Father is one who gives.
God the Father is a gift-giver. He is not first of all a monitor, a governor, a punisher, or a commander. He is a gift-giver. And this is, above all, the case with His Only-Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Take just one verse. Jesus says, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).
But God the Father is also one who gives good gifts to His created children. Jesus says, “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” (Matthew 7:9-11).
In other words, the natural impulse of fathers to be generous with their children derives originally from God the Father’s desire to be generous with all of us.
But if our role is to be gift-givers, then what kind of gifts should we focus on giving?
Three
The gift of sharing life
The primary thing God the Father has given God the Son is Divine Life. John 5:26: “For just as the Father has life in Himself, so has He given it to the Son also to have life in Himself.”
This is the supreme, Trinitarian gift that the Father has given to the Son: a perfect, complete sharing in the Divine Life. Both Father and Son share divine life infinitely and perfectly. And now they have desired to share that divine life with us creatures, in a finite way.
But remember, we’re talking about how human fathers can learn what their role is supposed to be by considering what the Heavenly Father does. So, if the Heavenly Father shares His life with His Son, how should we human fathers share our life with our children?
Four
Sharing natural life with our kids
We human beings are naturally composed of body and soul. So, to share life with our kids means to share our life at the level of the body and the soul.
We share our physical life with our children first of all when we generate them. We literally share our biology, our DNA, and our humanity, with our kids.
Moreover, insofar as we are meant to be providers for our family, we go out and earn money to provide our kids with the physical necessities: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc…
But if we’re really going to share our full lives with our kids, then we can just stop at the body. We have to share our souls with them too. Which, actually, takes a lot more time and effort.
We fathers have to teach our kids, listen to our kids, and help our kids as they come to share in the fullness of human experience.
If we get caught up in just our roles as providers, we’re not sharing the fullness of life with our kids, which means we’re not giving as generously as the Father gives to His Son.
Pope John Paul II was careful to warn against this trend, “Where social and cultural conditions so easily encourage a father to be less concerned with his family, or at any rate less involved in the work of education, efforts must be made to restore socially the conviction that the place and task of the father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance… As experience teaches, the absence of a father causes psychological and moral imbalance and notable difficulties in family relationships.”
If we want to give our kids good gifts, which is what it means to be a father, then we have to give ourselves, which can only be done through time, love, and the transmission of values and virtues.
Five
Sharing supernatural life
We’ve said that if we want to model ourselves after the Heavenly Father, we fathers will see ourselves as the givers of good gifts. And we’ve said that the fundamental gift we give is the sharing of our life, just as God the Father shares His Divine Life with God the Son.
So, we share our biological life with our children. And we share the life of our souls with our kids. But as Christians, we have yet another life. We have the life of the Spirit, the life of grace, the life of faith in Jesus Christ.
This is the third great gift we must give our kids: sharing our faith, sharing our hope, sharing the Gospel and the life of sacraments and prayer, with our kids.
If we give these three things:
Providing for physical needs
Being present to them to help them develop the maturity of soul
Handing on the faith of the Church
Then, and only then, will we have been the fathers God has called us to be in imitation of Him.