2010-06-20 - Our national Father's Day . . .

A priest is “Father” from the day of his ordination. There may be other titles along the way, such as Excellency, Grace, Eminence and so forth, but at the top of it all (or rather in the center), the man who becomes Pope is once again "Father." The Pope signs himself with the letters "PP," which are an abbreviation for the Greek pappas, Latinized into the affectionate papa.
     Our national Father's Day reminds us that every day is Father's Day for those who accept "… the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father” (Rom.8:15; cf. Gal 4:5-6). It is foolish to take literally our Lord's command to call no man Father, as do some misguided preachers who like to be called Mister or Doctor, although that was forbidden too.  To ‘call no man Father or Teacher’ is to remember that all life and wisdom come from God alone. The faithful father of children – who is an heroic figure in our "culture of death" that scorns the holiness of marriage – procreates on behalf of the divine Creator. Ronald Knox wrote: "You must not wait till you can learn to understand your father before you learn to know God. It is by learning to know God that you will learn to understand your father." Likewise, priests can do nothing without God's authority.
     On Father's Day, we should pray especially for our Holy Father the Pope, remembering the words of Georges Chevrot: "We will not fall into the all too easy temptations of setting one Pope against another, having confidence only in those whose actions respond to our personal feeling. We are not among those who nostalgically look back to a former Pope or look forward to one in the future who will eventually dispense us from obeying the present one. Therefore, speaking of the Roman pontiff we exclude from our vocabulary any expressions derived from parliamentary assemblies or the polemics of newspapers … "
     On the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Pope Benedict XVI gathered around him 15,000 priests from 90 nations, the largest gathering of priests in two thousand years. He spoke as their spiritual father, encouraging them to be good spiritual fathers to others. The enemy of fatherhood is The Enemy himself, Satan, who hates the Church and her priests and her people. “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the Antichrist – he denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). The Pope said, "It was to be expected that this new radiance of the priesthood would not be pleasing to the 'enemy.’ He would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of the world. But for us what happened was precisely the opposite: we grew in gratitude for God's gift, a gift concealed in 'earthen vessels'.”