6/15/2014

DADS

are indispensable.

They impart a truth about God:

This year on the civil calendar, the Feast of the Holy Trinity is denoted as Father's Day.  That is a chronological coincidence, but it also may be understood as a theological providence.  The true meaning of fatherhood, far exalted above plain biological parenthood, is rightly understood only by understanding the inner nature of the Holy Trinity.  For old heretics called Gnostics, who flourish today by different names, the Fatherhood of God is a human concept, and basically a psychological projection of a patriarchal society.  Through Christ and the Holy Spirit, we know that the mystery of God the Father is the very opposite of a human self-projection.  Christianity is singular in its vital worship of God truly as father and not as a symbol or metaphor.

The Feast of the Holy Trinity follows Pentecost because it is only the Holy Spirit, promised by the Son, who enables the Church to know the Father.  No one comes to the Father but through the Son and the bond of love between them by which the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, makes him known.  The less a society is guided by this mystery, the less it understands human fathers.  We need only look around us to see the social and material chaos caused by an increasingly fatherless culture with all its consequences:  family breakdown and gender confusion.

In such a dark time, the Church has the vocation to instruct in the meaning of fatherhood, to encourage young men to embrace the role of fathers of families, and to guide those who do so.  "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Ephesians 3: 14-17).

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