On Father's Day: Missing my Dad

The ones who have "named" us, our fathers, have helped to give us our identity. They are a treasure to be received and we should thank them.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."(Ephesians 3:14 - 19)

So wrote the Apostle Paul to the early Christians in Ephesus. The Greek word for Father and family are connected. Paul is using them in a sort of play on words to make a profoundly important theological and existential point. Fathers are the foundation of families, they give them identity and meaning in life and in death. The Catholic Catechism says, "The divine fatherhood is the source of human fatherhood; this is the foundation of the honor owed to parents." (CCC#2214)

The Biblical understanding of naming someone was a far more significant action than many of our contemporary approaches. To confer a name was understood to confer both identity and an ongoing relationship between the parties.

It still does.

On this day when we stop for a moment, leaving aside the hectic pace of our lives to honor and remember our fathers, we have an opportunity to reflect on what really matters most in our lives. The ones who have "named" us, our fathers, have helped to give us our identity. They are a treasure to be received and we should thank them.

I lost my dear father in 2001. In that same year, my beloved wife also lost her father, my father in law, with whom I also had a wonderful relationship. We refer to that year still, with a heartbreaking sadness, as the year of our two fathers. When father's day rolls around, we still grieve, even as we laugh and remember them both.

Now, when we are with our own children and grandchildren, we tell the stories of our fathers with fondness and ever deepening gratitude.

As the years have passed, my sense of loss has not dissipated. It has only changed. As I so often tell grieving family members at funerals, the pain of loss on the memory of our deceased loved ones is just another manifestation of the eternal nature of all love.

Today, I know the truth of that insight as I watch the smiling eyes of our latest grandchild and only wish my Dad were with us to enjoy these precious moments.

My father grew in tenderness and compassion as he faced death. It is funny how difficulties and struggle, suffering and strife, seem to be the most effective means of refining us all. He finally died of the heart ailment which had claimed so much of his vigor. However, like every struggle my father faced, he did not give up. He was a fighter and he did not want to go. In fact, I was at his "death bed" a couple of times, or so we thought it was his death bed. He decided he had more jokes to tell and love to give.

It was that fighting spirit which I have particularly grown to admire as the years have passed by. Oh, as a younger man, he perhaps fought the wrong battles. We all do. But, that does not really matter any longer. Life smoothes it all out and time presses us into love.

I see now that it only gave him time to smooth off the rough edges of a hard life and to simplify. So it is doing with me, his son.

How my father loved to hear from us as he grew older. Sadly, in retrospect, I regret just how little we really called. How I would love to have just one of those conversations today.I miss him.

Though we can't get those years back, time is meant become a tutor. The lessons abound. The memories of the time I did have with him take on new meaning as I walk along the path that he did, raising my family and trying to love in both word and deed.

Now, in my fifties, I remember him in his fifties. I cherish the last times we had and I share with my own grown children, and grandchildren, the stories, and his humor. In fact, in what is the most common experience of all, I actually tell his jokes, use his expressions, both facial and verbal and, in so many respects, I have become just like him.

Our earthly fathers and our relationships with them reflect in a miniscule way the great meaning which they are meant to symbolize. We were all given life, identity and an invitation into a relationship for all eternity with the God who is our eternal Father.

He has given us His very name, His identity. In and through Jesus Christ, His only Son, we have now become "sons (and daughters) in the Son", through our Baptism of new birth in water and the Spirit. We are a part of an eternal family, and as the same apostle Paul told the Christians in Rome, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, not even death.

I am always glad when Fathers Day falls on a Sunday; it gives me a special opportunity to pray at Mass for my father and my father in law.

Fathering is a great gift and a great responsibility.

As a Catholic Christian, I know that I am still joined to my father and my father in law in the real communion that is the Church, which stretches through time and into eternity. That Church is a participation in an eternal communion of love. At that moment in the Canon of the Mass, when we pray for those who have died, I will pray for them both.

Then I will reflect all day upon the great gift of the years that I had with Dad. I will call my own children. The ones who are with us in the home will receive bountiful hugs, as will each of our grandchildren.

Happy Father's Day.I miss my Dad, enjoy yours.

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