Happy belated Father’s Day!

When we think about the family as a living icon of the Trinity, what has always been forefront in my mind is the Love between the Father and Son which begets the Spirit:  marital love is so powerful and beautiful it creates not just children, but the proper environment for them to flourish.  It is not what we give our children which benefits them most, not even the unconditional love we have for them.  No, our greatest gift is our love for each other which creates in them a sense of well being and security.  My children have often questioned my love for them, this is natural when they do not understand why I denied what they wanted.  But they have never questioned my love for their father nor his love for me.  And it is that love which begets their security in a world with so few certainties.

But lately I have thought a bit differently about this icon.  My nephew recently got married and on his marriage certificate was a painting of a Bishop hearing the vows of a couple.  It clearly brought to my mind Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity.  But as I contemplated it, my thinking was stretched in new ways.

The bishop shares the spot of Christ in the triangle.  This makes sense as the church is His representative on earth.  But the bride held the place of the Father which made me contemplate how mothers are like God the Father.  The comparisons between earthly fathers and the divine Father are many.  But why does the future mother sit at His seat at the table?  

But more interesting is that the future father sits in the place of the Holy Spirit.  This is worth contemplating.  Mary is of course the bride of the Holy Spirit.  One of the most profound things I have read was from Maximilian Kolbe where he states that beget from the Father and Son, the spirit is THE immaculate conception, and thus Mary as the mortal Immaculate  conception is the bride taking her spouses’ name.  I love that!

But also, when we think of the father’s role in the family, he is the spiritual life blood.  While mothers primarily deal with the day to day, the father must be more forward thinking.  While we feed and comfort, nag and cajole, to make sure they are prepared for the world, he must lead his children to be prepared for eternity. We teach them to imitate Christ, he teaches them to be the force behind Christ: The unseen power that turns a seed into a tree.

It is for this reason that men must again take seriously their job of spiritual leader in the family.  For too long this has fallen to moms.  We are as spiritual, do not mistake my meaning, but the child sees in his earthly father a different sort of leader.  If our children see eternity as the stuff of women, even our girls may turn away.  They, boys and girls, must see eternity as the stuff of warriors, the stuff of heroes, the stuff of their father!