14. Paternity

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The burden of these chapters is that love is not an evolution from the sex of the animal kingdom, but that sex is a physiological expression of Love, issuing from the Kingdom of God. Love is not an ascent from the beast, but a descent from Divinity. In like manner, fatherhood is not a complex expression in the human order of what is common to the horse, the bull, the cock, or the stag, but a reflection of the Fatherhood that is eternally in God. "I fall on my knees to the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its title." (Eph. 3:14)

Not only does the Father possess the Perfect Life, but He has the Power to communicate it. He is Eternal and Divine Fecundity. The Father, in our poor language, is necessarily altruistic, not just because He is Good, but because He is Father. Generosity in God is not what it is in a philanthropist or a hero, a disposition of the soul or a virtue; rather, He is the Personification of Generosity. The Son is generated not by a part of Himself, nor by a division of Himself, nor by a power issuing from Himself, but by the plenitude of all that He is personally. If we can speak of the one thing that  He does not give in the unique way He possesses it, it is that of being a Father. That uncommunicable relation is His for Eternity. All humans possess, in a relative and diminished way, this quality of personality. The "I" of John can never be communicated to the "I" of Paul. There is an impenetrability which makes each person what he is and different from every other. What makes the Person of the Heavenly Father distinct from the Son or the Holy Spirit is not love, nor power, nor Divinity, for the Three Persons share the Divine Nature. Rather, the secret of the Father is that of being Origin without Origin, Source without Source, Father without Father. Not even the generation of His Son destroys the perfect distinction which exists between Him Who gives and Him Who receives. The power to give His Divine Splendor belongs to the Father alone; to receive that Image belongs to the Son alone; and never are the two confounded or confused. The Father has and can have only one Son, for the generation is so perfect as to create the Perfect Image. Herein is the mystery of why God gave the command "increase and multiply," in order that the eternal fecundity of God might have its repercussions in Time.

As the Son is the Eternal Image of what the Father knows Himself to be, so, in the human order, God wills that an earthly father should know himself in a new way in his son, which explains the pride of a father in his son. Whatever glory the son has, is the father's glory. "That is my boy." "My child did this."

The initiative which is given earthly fathers to beget new fountains of life is not only a participation in Divine Fatherhood; there is a further likeness in that the good father will so educate his children that they will go back again to God, from Whom they came. As the Eternal Son is distinct but never separated in nature from the Father, so the children will never be separated in education and destiny from their Heavenly Father. Multitudinous, "like an army in battle array," are the "Associations of Christian Mothers," but the poor Christian Fathers are forgotten. Our Lord, the night of the Last Supper, held up the beautiful ideal of His Love for His Heavenly Father as the basis of the unity to be found among men: "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me." (John 14:10)

There are no great physiological changes in the father at birth as in the mother, but he undergoes profound psychological changes. Maternity hospitals find it more difficult, at times, to deal with the peripatetic fathers than with the laboring mothers. The fact is that the consciousness of fatherhood does something to one's mental vision of the world, as a priest, hearing himself called "Father" after his ordination, summons in his soul a world of souls to whom his spiritual responsibility is committed.

The thrill of the farmer in the springtime, as he sees the grains of a wheat which he planted come up through the dead earth, little green swords pledging defense of human life; the joy at seeing a geranium bud in a tin full of earth on a tenement window sill; the ecstasy of the saint at seeing a sinner, dead in sin, responding to a word or a prayer and beginning to live in Christ: all these are earth's witnesses to the inherent happiness that comes to anyone who sees life springing, sprouting, or a-borning. Love does not mean merely the joy to possess; it means also the will to see a new life born out of that love. The realization that he has passed on the torch of life, and can see it flowering before his eyes in "his own image and likeness," is the basic reason why a man when he has become a father is no longer just a man. His is the supreme moment of self-recovery, the resigning of a lease on life; it is time's best moment, when a man feels, within himself, the shimmering refraction of the Eternal Joy of an Eternal Father begetting an Eternal Son, and saying to Him in the noontide of Paternity: "Thou art My Son; I have begotten thee this day." (Psalm 2:7) As the Son is the Lumen de Lumine, the Light of the Light, so in the newborn infant is "flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone."

This psychic revolution at the instant of paternity has also a further effect. Not only is it a bond with a child, but it is also a new bond with the mother. The newborn child not only unveiled fatherhood in the husband, but also motherhood in the wife. From that moment on, she appears before him in a relationship which never before existed. Not only did he "make" a son; he also made a "mother." He pays back to his own mother her gift of himself by dignifying another woman with that most glorious of titles. Our Lord thought of His own Mother before the world was made; then He created His Mother, in a way no creature could ever do. In His Goodness, He communicated to a husband the power to make his greatest love a mother, not his mother but the mother of his son. The unmarried women who long for a child of their own to love are in their heart of hearts glorifying the power of fatherhood. Which of the wonders of fatherhood strikes him most, the father has probably never decided for himself: that of generating a son, or that of making a mother for his son. But since the two are inseparable aspects of his sacrament of paternity, he will never again be the same in the face of that double mystery.

Our Lord changed his relation with His Blessed Mother at the Cross by making her His Spouse, from whom would be begotten the members of His Mystical Body. In marriage, the mystery is reversed; the bride is first the spouse, and then the mother. In Christ, Mary is first the Mother of Christ, and then the Mother of all the children of men, and, therefore, the Spouse, or the new Eve of the New Adam.

The "Our Father," which expresses the attitude that creatures should have to their heavenly Father, must also be, analogically, a compendium of the attitude children should have to their earthly father. The prayer has seven petitions. There is one central petition which ties the first three petitions, which take us to heaven, to the last three, which picture us struggling on earth. In the first three, we raise the soul to God; the last three lift the soul from the thralldom of evil. The middle petition is the only one that has to do directly with the body.

After an address, "Our Father Who art in heaven," there follow three petitions, which center on:

(1) WORSHIP OF GOD

"Hallowed be thy name."

(2) THE SPREADING OF GOD'S KINGDOM

"Thy kingdom come."

(3) DOING OF GOD'S WILL

"Thy will be done."

(4) Middle Petition--which unites both heaven and earth, and is the condition of the union

"Give us this day our daily bread."

Then follow the three prayers which do not deal with the purposes of God, but with the combat of man:

(5) FORGIVENESS FOR PAST SINS

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us."

(6) PRESERVATION FROM FUTURE SINS

"And lead us not into temptation,"

(7) PRESERVATION FROM ALL TRIALS

"But deliver us from evil."

These may be applied to the earthly father:

"Hallowed be thy name."

"Children must be obedient to their parents in every way; it is a gracious sign of serving the Lord." (Col. 3:21) "Honour thy father and thy mother." (Exodus 20:12) "For a father's good repute or ill, a son must go proudly, or hang his head." (Eccl. 3:13)

"Thy kingdom come."

His kingdom is the family. "I never understood the meaning of 'Thy kingdom come' until I looked up into the face of my child." (Leon Bloy) "It was not you that chose me; it was I that chose you. The task I have appointed you is to go out and bear fruit, fruit which will endure." (John 15:16)

"Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven."

"Heed well, my son, thy father's warnings." (Proverbs 1:8) "Do you, sons, give good heed, and follow these counsels, if thrive you would." (Eccl. 3:2) "You who are children must show obedience in the Lord to your parents." (Eph. 6:1)

"Give us this day our daily bread."

The father is the provider of the family. "Whatever gifts are worth having, whatever endowments are perfect of their kind, these come to us from above; they are sent down by the Father." (James 1:17) "It is for thy children to ask thee for what they need, not to have thyself for their pensioner." (Eccl. 33:22)

"Forgive us our trespasses."

"You who are fathers, do not rouse your children to resentment; the training, the discipline in which you bring them up must come from the Lord." (Eph. 6:4)

"And lead us not into temptation."

"How bitter their complaints against the father who is the author of their ill fame." (Eccl. 41:10)

"But deliver us from evil."

"Was there ever a son whom his father did not correct? No, correction is the common lot of all; you must be bastards, not true sons, if you are left without it." (Hebrew 12:8)

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