Fathers

Cool Scripture Cite

"For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father.'" (Romans 8:15)

Hot Internet Site

Endorsed by Gary Smalley and John Trent, fathers.com strives to "improve the well-being of children by inspiring and equipping men to be more effectively involved in the lives of children.. In response to a dramatic trend towards fatherlessness in America." The site contains training resources, inspiration, and a support community for fathers.

http://www.fathers.com

Our Father's Warmth

By Ricard Maria Cardinal Carles, Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain

One winter day, on a trip through my first diocese, a mother told me how she managed to protect her children from the cold. The family lives in a mountainous region. The home, very far from any village, is on a plain, three thousand feet high. Temperatures in winter, are extremely low there. But it does not snow so much that cattle cannot go out into the fields. The cattle had to be taken out to the mountain at least a few hours daily to graze. The mother would heat a bag of water for her son who was taking care of the herd; he carried it slung across his shoulders underneath his clothes, protecting him from the merciless cold. The youngster felt protected while the water-–his mother’s warmth-–kept its heat. Before returning, he would empty the water in order not to carry a useless weight, and then the cold would start to get hold of him.

This story reminds me of Dostoevsky's words: "When the Father goes away, the children experience cold." God has given us a source of vital warmth which consists of our faith: the Spirit within us, the grace and love of God, and the direction God gives our lives. People today seem to want to get along without all this; to feel freer and more independent.

Dostoevsky, in The Adolescent, expresses what it is like to be without God: "Men, having become orphans, would quickly press against each other; would hold hands, understanding that from now on they are all one for the other. All that great excess of love for Him who is immortality, would turn towards nature, men, every blade of grass . . . Men . . . would quickly turn to loving one another, knowing that their days are brief and that this is all that is left to them. Everyone would give everything to all, and this would make everyone happy."

But, as Cardinal Godfried Daneels says, when the Father (God) disappears the children quiver with cold. If God disappears from our personal and social horizon--and some among us seem to try to achieve this by all means possible--we will find ourselves in the midst of winter. Without God, any warmth is haystack fire, it only lasts for an instant; it cannot give warmth to the children. On writing this, I have recalled what the well known Father Eusebio Colomer, said: "the death of God is the prelude to the death of man."

Monsignor Daneels goes on to say, "Remembering that we are children of God can cure us, the entrance into a second childhood, the moving from science to wisdom, from the head to the heart. To discover God as Father and to enter with Christ in the childlike experience. Christian faith consists basically in this. And this experience is profoundly therapeutic for our civilization."