Why Children Don’t Need Perfect Fathers—but Present Ones

Why Children Don’t Need Perfect Fathers—but Present Ones

We want our children to know God…to love God.

But how can they know and love a God that they cannot see, hear or feel?

The answer to this question seems beyond us.

But what if there is someone on earth who could transmit the face of the Father that they cannot see, the voice of the Father that they cannot hear, the touch of the Father that they cannot feel?

St. Pope John Paul II said that the human father has been created by the heavenly Father to relive and reveal God the Father’s love to his child.
How could that be?

How can a fallen, sinful man like you or I be a living reflection of God the Father to our children?

The author of Ephesians testifies to this truth: “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from Whom all fatherhood derives its name” (Eph 3:14).
You have been created, named, and claimed by God the Father as a father for the purpose of expressing His fatherhood to this fallen, broken world—especially your own children.

If you don’t accomplish this great mission, who will?

Your mission is to assist God in the great mission of reproducing the love of the Trinity in your family by means of transmitting the generosity, sacrificial love, authority, and power of God the Father to your family.
The principal and source of the Trinity is the unbegotten Begetter, the Father of the Begotten One, the Word—Jesus.

As fatherhood is expressed in the divine Godhead and in St. Joseph’s family, you are to express fatherhood in your family.
Your fatherhood is the initiating, human, “source” that transmits God’s life of grace to your family.

Without you initiating self-sacrificial love, your family will struggle if not fail to be animated by God’s self-giving love.

You are a link between heaven and earth, between God and man, between the Father and His (your) children.
Your greatest mission is to become like God, a human father who becomes the very presence of God the Father’s love.

The three ways to fulfill that incredible mission is to first be the face of the Father that they cannot see, second become the voice of the Father that they cannot hear, and third become the touch of the Father that they cannot feel.

But how do you do that?
It is up to you to put forth the effort to know the God that you represent.
By knowing God the Father you will become like Him, and becoming like Him, you will love like Him, and your children, receiving that love we love Him in return.