Fathers’ Day 2023

I had the grace this past Sunday morning of participating in a (mostly old) men’s zoom group at our church. The topic was, no surprise, fathers and being a father and grandfather and so on. And, no coincidence, about mothers and daughters and children generally.

For me, both as a father and grandfather, but also as a sometime theologian, the event was graced in many ways. Let me try to count some of them.

(This is one of the things that preachy old teachers do: we try to put into words the mystery of grace, or said differently, to surround the mystery with words which might help us to be more open to the experience of grace — or something like that. And we tend to be wordy.)

Talking with my peers in fatherhood, I was struck over and over again by the power of the family, both for wounding and for healing – and more generally the fundamental importance of the Catholic teaching and the universal cultural belief in the centrality of the family for all human life. Most folks reading this essay may agree with me in disagreeing with very much about present Catholic teachings on gender-sexuality-family issues. Yet I want to say (very much, again, in the spirit of my fathers/grandfathers discussion this morning), that such “catholic” teaching about the fundamental good and sacredness of the family needs to be reaffirmed as it is reappropriated or developed in response to the divisive issues and deep concerns we face – concerns about pre-marital sex and the hook-up culture, about abortion, about divorce and remarriage, about gay-lesbian-trans-bi children or students or colleagues. My point is that we and our children and grandchildren are already engaged in the very difficult (and often mistake-ridden) business of re-imagining and re-shaping that fundamental vision of the sacredness of the family as we struggle through struggle through these crises and challenges.

My second reflection during and since this “Father’s Day” zoom concerns G.d or YHWH or Ultimate Ground and the like. “God-talk” as the discussion was named back in the day. How to name the NAMELESS. At any rate, I experienced during our conversation the deep importance of “joinin’ Jesus” in calling G.d his “Father.” I’ve personally been attempting pray to the Great Mother, She Who Is. And I find this way of praying most meaningful when I’m close to nature. Yet I also believe that it’s more than OK to pray to “Our Father in Heaven” and to reverence the name of Father.

I suspect there is a deep hunger for a return of a more authoritative father figure in our conservative religious and cultural circles. And while I would probably disagree with them on many of the ways in which they want such a patriarch to rule, I suspect we’re all in need of newer and better forms of paternal or father’s authority. And, by the way, if my morning zoom group is any indication, the old patriarchy is not so much crumbling as being transformed in hopefully better ways.

My final reflection takes me back (as always, it seems) to my mentor William Lynch, SJ. His thinking stresses that we humans are creatures of time, limited by it, pushed by it, fearful or hopeful because of it…and that the spiritual journey of each of our lives is a matter of living through time, through its stages and phases, not seeking to avoid its challenges and sufferings, and its many ironic turns. Not seeking to escape time by various forms of fantasy and flight.

In this journey through the joys and sorrows of time, for Lynch and many of us, the model and guide we need is given in the life of that man Jesus whom we rightly call our Lord and Savior. This model and guide is found less in the Christ of dogmatic formulations (however important they are) than the Jesus of the Gospels. And for Lynch, as a Jesuit, it is the life of Jesus as understood and re-experienced through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. This, at any rate, is how Fr. Lynch understands time.

Those previous sentences probably need lots of explanation but let me return to my men’s zoom session.

We talked about our fathers and grandfathers, and about growing up with different kinds of fathers — close and distant, strict and easy-going — and then about becoming fathers and often grandfathers. We talked about playing sports, pursuing careers, experiencing loss and death. Try for a moment to imagine the scene and the many experiences of this group of older men. Imagine but for a moment the many different stories told. We were making clear (even to ourselves) the many ways we’ve moved through time’s invitations and challenges and sufferings and “dramas”.

I put quotes around the word “drama” because we tend not to use it much since its meaning has been so reduced by our media. Lynch, on the other hand, thought the word “drama” one of the most important in our language since it articulates and embodies images of the many, many ways we move through time, the many stories (great or small) we tell about the times of our lives. Lynch urges us to learn the classical Greek understanding of drama: first we act (drama), and then we experience or “suffer” (pathos) the world’s response or the inevitable reaction to our action, and then (hopefully) we learn (mathos) from such experience how better to move through time, even unto death. It’s a simple formula — act and suffer and learn — which can help us to understand the many dramas, daily and momentous, which characterize our life in time.

And here I add a note of faith which I believe is shared (each in his own way) by the members of this zoom group. In the Gospel story, having met the resurrected Jesus on road to Emmaus, the disciples remember how “our hearts were burning within us.” I felt that way this morning. I believe that the Spirit of God (however named or imagined) was moving through our “zoom room.” I believe that Spirit guides all fathers and mothers and all their familial relations. Until death do us part. I also believe that Our Good Father reaches out to heal the wounds experienced by so many fathers and sons, and the wounds inflicted by so many fathers and sons.

Amen. Allelluia.