The Gift of Fathers (and Mothers)
Michiel Peeters - Dear friends, when God became a man, he entered this world through a normal human family, with a father – Joseph – and a mother – Mary.
In our time, the figure of the father (or of the mother, which is the same, “spiritually they are not two different things; it is only materially that things change, when one has his own limitation and the other a different one”), today the figure of the father is not taken very seriously, if it is not ridiculed.
There is little esteem of the figure of the father or mother, and it’s even more difficult to find convincing examples of fathers. Still, without a father, one cannot grow. The father is the one in whom you can see how it is possible to live; you can compare the way he lives, with your desire, and then you can follow what he follows.
Without a father, and without being a child, one can not learn to live. Without having a father, without being a child, without knowing how to be a child, one cannot become a father to others.
Permit me, on this feast, to quote a famous wish that Fr Giussani, the great Italian priest who in many respects has been my father, pronounced at the end of his life, in 1999:
“I wish that in your life, having encountered this great thing, which is a grace of God, […]; through the grace of this encounter that we have been given, there is a potential in you, a potential in you that the Spirit has put there, implicitly or more explicitly, according to each one’s own history, a capacity that the Spirit has put into you for witnessing to Christ, who is the only thing the world is waiting for, because where Christ is, relationships are peace, unity and peace, including those between married couples (unity and peace must be the binomial of the family; but this is true for everyone).
In any case, whatever the form of your vocation, my wish is that in this great thing, through this great thing that the Lord has given you [his presence to your life, in and through a precise company], if it becomes more and more personal, that is to say more obedient (because personalization, too, is obedience lived out intelligently), you may meet a father, you may have the experience of a father.
Because the first belonging, physiologically and sociologically speaking, and even to your own eyes, is to your parents. God is given to us through our father and mother.
May each one of you discover the greatness of this role, which is not a role; it is the condition in which man looks at and sees God, and in which God entrusts to man what he most wants; father and therefore mother, because it’s the same thing, spiritually they are not two different things; it is only materially that things change, when one has his own limitation and the other a different one. […]
May you live the experience of a father; father and mother; this is my wish for all the leaders, for all those responsible for your communities, but for each one of you, too, because each one has to be father to the friends he has around him, has to be mother of the people around about; not giving himself airs, but with real charity.
For no-one can be as fortunate and glad as a man and a woman who feel themselves made fathers and mothers by the Lord. Fathers and mothers of all those they meet”. This is our wish, on this day: that we may look out for a father, find a father, have the experience of a father, know how to be a child. And thus, become fathers and mothers for the friends, for the people around us.
The author did not review the notes and its translation.
