It was seven years into my marriage and five years into being a father that I realized I didn’t know what I was doing (that’s putting it mildly).
A year prior to being married, I had surrendered my life to Our Lord Jesus. Nevertheless, I worked around the clock to impress my employer while attempting to launch a start-up graphic design agency, and in my “spare time” serve as a part-time youth director at our local parish. Meanwhile, I placed my marriage and new family on the back burner.
The more that I chased worldly success, the more my marriage and family seemed to fall apart.
I searched for an encyclical on fatherhood and found nothing.
I scanned through the Catholic Catechism’s table of contents hoping to find answers to what it means to be a man, specifically a father (not just parents), specifically a husband (not just marriage), and came up with very little.
Soon I discovered that I was not the only man in the Catholic space who felt lost and in desperate need of solid vocational guidance.
One friend lamented, “Why are there so few men who are canonized specifically for their fatherhood? We need someone to show us the way.”
We men are funny creatures. We hate being “told what to do.” But when we don’t know what to do, we blame everyone else and anyone else for not telling us what to do.
The adage, “Kids don’t come with a manual,” became a source of frustration rather than a comfortable excuse to fail at my vocation.
I attempted to cobble together a smorgasbord spirituality that consisted of devotions and spiritualities that I found appealing: fragments from Jose Maria Escriva’s Opus Dei, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s rules for discernment, Carmelite spirituality and its mystics, St. Benedict’s rule and the like.
Nevertheless, I lamented that a spirituality, a code, a rule of life did not exist specifically for the man who embarked on the mission of marriage and fatherhood. In a sense, this father felt unfathered.
Perplexed, I questioned, “Is sainthood only for the priest, the bishop, the cloistered, the monastic? Is fatherhood a second-rate vocation?”
As the Dominicans, Benedictines, Franciscans, Carmelites, and others have a spirituality, a way of life that imparts a means toward sanctification, I also longed to live a spirituality designed specifically for a husband and father.
While on pilgrimage halfway around the world, during a conversation with our guide, I expressed that I felt God’s calling on my life but struggled to actuate it. Our guide, Nancy, asked, “Are you married?”
I responded affirmatively.
She proceeded with a second question, “Do you have children?”
“Yes, three.”
The following words that proceeded from her mouth changed the vision of my life forever: “Go home and be St. Joseph.”
“Who is Joseph?” I thought.
I returned home and set myself to the task of discovering who this hidden, silent, humble man was. I discovered not only the greatest father that has ever lived, but also his spirituality.
Sacred Scripture reveals that St. Joseph’s spirituality is founded upon four basic pillars: embrace silence, embrace woman, embrace the child, and embrace charitable authority.
These four pillars constituted that long-sought-after spirituality that my soul thirsted for.
Embrace Silence
Just as St. Joseph, when faced with the perplexing situation of Mary’s pregnancy, entered the silence and presented his grieving heart to God, a man is to cultivate silence within oneself by cutting out the noise, the cacophony readily available and provided on demand by social media, television, radio, smart devices, and the like. He establishes meeting times with God throughout his day. He embraces silence among men by living to be known by God rather than to be noticed by others. He embraces silence before God by offering Him little sacrifices and sufferings without boasting or complaining and playing the martyr.
Embrace Woman
A man embraces all women by defeating lust in his heart. He chooses to bless woman rather than attempt to possess her. He upholds her dignity and mystery at all costs. He embraces his wife by, as St. Paul says, “counting her as better than himself” (Phil. 2:3) and “bearing her burdens as his own” (see Gal. 6:2). He embraces The Woman, Mary the Mother of God, as his own mother. St. Joseph’s marriage and devotion to Mary inaugurated his call to fatherly greatness. To be a great man, we need the greatest woman. To be great fathers, we need the greatest mother. To be like St. Joseph, we need Mary.
Embrace the Child
St. John Paul II said that the human father’s mission is to reflect and reveal God’s fatherhood. This is perhaps the most challenging “job” there is. The human father is to be the face of God the Father that his child cannot see; the voice of God the Father that his child cannot hear; the touch of God the Father that his child cannot feel. Our Lord Jesus promises that “Whoever receives one such child in His name is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” In other words, fatherhood is an excellent path toward sublime sanctity because it grants a man entrance into the Divine Father’s heart.
Embrace Charitable Authority
Men typically fail in their role of leadership by either abdicating their responsibility to lead or by dominating those whom they are to care for. A great man leads by loving and loves by leading. He establishes daily practices that help him set the pace of self-giving love, by becoming the protector, the provider, and the priest of his family.
Within each of these pillars, I began to develop “spiritual practices” that made the theological practical . . . and my life was transformed.
- God asks that we fill the jars with water, and He will transform that water into wine.
- God asks for a few fish, which after He receives from us, He can multiply and feed the multitudes.
- God asks that we do the work of living St. Joseph’s four pillars, and He will transform and multiply our efforts.
St. Joseph allowed me to discover that just as the Dominicans, Benedictines, Franciscans, and Carmelites all have a particular spirituality, charism, and a rule of life, so also the human father has a spirituality, a rule of life, a pattern for holiness that is found upon the life and spiritualty of this great saint.
Fathers, husbands, and those who are discerning fatherhood and marriage need to hear the good news that they have a specific charism, a spirituality, a rule of life that if followed will aid them in becoming a man of glory—yes, even a saint.
Editor’s Note: For more on establishing a rule of life as a lay person, as a husband, as a father, read this author’s new book, The Rule: Counsels and Directives for Husbands and Fathers, available from Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash
