Weekly Reflection 06/20/2021

Today we celebrate Father’s Day; technically, this June 20^th we celebrate 111 years since the first Father’s Day.  Even though it was first celebrated on 19 June 1910, it took until 1972 for Father’s Day to be signed into public law.  According to the Library of Congress, President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea as far back as 1924, “in order to establish closer relationships between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”  I will refrain from oversimplifying fatherly relationships to children because each of us has our own story about our relationship or lack of relationship to our fathers. In some ways that last statement is reflective of the truth about our relationship to our heavenly Father as well.  President Coolidge’s intent behind Father’s Day is still on point today. Fatherhood is a vocation. With fatherhood comes responsibility to serve, serve your family.  My other vocation, the deaconate doesn’t make me special, doesn’t make me any better a father than any father reading this reflection. What is does do for me personally is allow me to show my children that God in your life is a priority.  Being a deacon and a father for my parishes gives me an opportunity to meet people where a person answering the call to single life or the priesthood can’t. Both of my vocations, married life and fatherhood and the deaconate both have that purpose identified by Calvin Coolidge: “establish closer relationships between fathers and their children.” For me that includes not just my relationship to my children but helping build closer relationships between children, us, and the father.  To all those fathers our there, this is a good time to evaluate our priorities in life, our families, our relationship to our heavenly father and give our children that example of service, commitment, love, and charity that come with the privilege of being Fathers.