Tyler Rowley - Because of Our Fathers: Twenty-Three Catholics Tell How Their Fathers Led Them to Christ

BECAUSE OF OUR FATHERS

Twenty-Three Catholics
Tell How Their Fathers
Led Them to Christ

Edited by Tyler Rowley

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Ignatius Press thanks Angelico Press for the permission to use an excerpt from Hanna Skandars 2019 book Love Is a Radiant Light: The Life and Words of Saint Charbel .

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition) copyright National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover design by Kyle Rowley

2020 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-62164-347-0 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-64229-132-2 (eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number 2020930314
Printed in the United States of America

To Saint Joseph

by Tyler Rowley

The family is the basis in the Lords plan, and all the forces of evil aim to demolish it. Uphold your families and guard them against the grudges of the Evil One by the presence of God.

Saint Charbel

United States senator Rick Santorum had always wanted to meet Pope John Paul II, so in the summer of 1999, he took his family to visit the Vatican with the hope of meeting the great pontiff. They were in Rome for three days when they finally received the call: they were invited to the popes private chapel for morning Mass.

At six oclock in the morning, Rick and Karen Santorum rounded up their four young children and hurried through the Vatican streets, past the Swiss Guards, through the Bronze Doors, across two courtyards, and up four flights of stairs to the popes private residence. As they stood inside the holding room, just outside the chapel, they noticed that most of the other guests were religious sisters, priests, and older couples. Rick and Karen, the only guests with children, agreed that they would sit in the back pew for the Mass to ensure they did not disrupt this special occasion. Bishop Dziwisz, the popes secretary, was insistent, however, that they sit in the front row. Senator Santorum was surprised at their blatant efforts to highlight the presence of a high-ranking U.S. politician during Mass, but he agreed to their request.

Inside the chapel, they were seated so close to the pope that they could have reached out and touched his vestments. As he celebrated Mass, the Santorums were brought to tears. Never before had they seen someone so absorbed in prayer, as if he were in another world. At one point, the pope looked into the faces of their children, engaging them with his infectious smile, his face filled with joy at their presence.

After Mass in the papal residence, it is customary for attendees to meet the pope briefly. As the line was forming, the Santorums headed to the back, but, once again, Bishop Dziwisz ordered them to the front. Senator Santorum was now feeling uncomfortable for being treated so favorably because of his elected office, so he told Bishop Dziwisz that he and his family would happily go to the back of the line. Bishop Dziwisz interrupted the senators refusal, and in his thick Polish accent said to him, Important man.

No, no. I am not, replied Senator Santorum.

Important man, Dziwisz said again, this time poking his finger into the senators chest.

Senator Santorum embarrassingly shrugged off the compliment again: Thank you, Your Excellency, but Im really not.

This time Bishop Dziwisz wagged his finger in the senators face, pointed very deliberately to each of his four children, then returned his finger to Santorums chest, and said even more forcefully, Important man! It is difficult to overlook the importance of fatherhood in Catholic teaching. Father is the very name that Jesus gives to God; it is the title we give to priests who act in the person of Christ; and it is the father who the New Testament tells us is head of the Christian household. Perhaps the best story that underscores the importance of fatherhood comes to us from Scriptures revelation regarding the inception of the Holy Family.

The Gospel of Matthew informs us that when Saint Joseph learned of Marys pregnancy, he decided to send her away quietly so as not to cause her the shame of divorce (1:19). This decision, according to the Gospel, was in keeping with Josephs being a just and righteous man. God, however, had a different plan. He sent an angel to Joseph to calm his fears and to incorporate him into the family of the One Who would save the world from sin.

We must stop here to consider the powerful tribute to fatherhood this story provides to us. Surely, if there was ever a family who was not in need of the presence of a male figure in the household, it was this family, and yet, at the culmination of Gods revelation of His love for mankind, His immediate concern is to provide Jesus with a father.

God wanted Jesus to have an earthly father because God wanted the Son to have the same kind of family that He intended for every person. Every man, and certainly every father, would do well to contemplate this divinely revealed truth. The family is Gods perfectly designed human relationship that resembles His divine nature: loving and life-giving. As Pope Benedict XVI says in Deus caritas est , the family is the icon of the relationship between God and his people (no. 11). In this relationship, the father is necessary not only to create new life, but also, as exemplified by the Holy Family, to lead, protect, and educate all of the family members. As Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us, The father is the principle of generation, of education, of learning, and of whatever pertains to the perfection of human life. At the dawn of salvation, it was the birth of a child that heralded good news. That child needed a mother and a father. And if Jesus needed Joseph, how much more do you and I need our fathers?

What happens to a world that does not understand this fundamental truth about the nature of the family and the necessity of paternal care and witness? Today, a great number of men, forgetful of their divine mission, neglect their paternal role altogether, or, if they remain in their childrens lives and provide for their material needs, they do not participate in their spiritual formation. Pope Pius IX, in his 1930 encyclical Casti connubii (On Christian Marriage ), prophetically addressed this growing crisis:

Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of Gods household, that the worshippers of God and Our Savior may daily increase.... For the most wise God would have failed to make sufficient provision for children that had been born, and so for the whole human race, if He had not given to those to whom He had entrusted the power and right to beget them, the power also and the right to educate them. For no one can fail to see that children are incapable of providing wholly for themselves, even in matters pertaining to their natural life, and much less in those pertaining to the supernatural, but require for many years to be helped, instructed, and educated by others. Now it is certain that both by the law of nature and of God this right and duty of educating their offspring belongs in the first place to those who began the work of nature by giving them birth, and they are indeed forbidden to leave unfinished this work and so expose it to certain ruin. (nos. 13, 16)

In many respects, and in many places around the world, the Catholic Church is in ruin. Therefore, the world she is tasked with shepherding is in ruin, and this cultural breakdown can be attributed to the fathers who have abandoned their sacred duty to educate their children to become members of the Church of Christ. This neglect leaves children unequipped to grow in virtue, pursue the worlds deepest truths, worship correctly, pursue authentic justice, build healthy families of their own, and face the world in the most meaningful and impactful ways. It is true, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out over a century ago, that when children are not enlightened by religious instruction... every form of intellectual culture will be injurious; for young people not accustomed to respect God, will be unable to bear the restraint of a virtuous life, and never having learned to deny themselves anything, they will easily be incited to disturb the public order.