“Take time to be
present. Make time to be present.”
A Message for
Father’s Day
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time -- June 17, 2012
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus said to the crowds: "This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come."
He said, "To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade." With many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables He did not speak to them, but to his own disciples He explained everything in private.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
The beginning of summer
This coming Wednesday, June 20, summer
begins. At the beginning of summer the days have 15 long hours of light and
only 9 short hours of darkness. Then the light of day will begin to diminish
until December 21 when winter begins. At the
very beginning of winter the days have only 9 short hours of light and 15 long hours
of darkness. The darkness of winter always magnifies all our worries and fears,
which are always reduced to size by a bright summer day. And the cold of winter
always intensifies our aches and pains, which are always soothed by the kind
kiss of the summer sun.
Father’s Day
Today, the 3rd Sunday of June, is Father’s Day on the
US calendar. William Smart, a Civil War veteran, was widowed when his wife died
in childbirth with their sixth child. He was left to raise the newborn and his
other five children by himself on a rural farm in Spokane, WA. One of his daughters realized how much strength and
selflessness it took for her father to raise six children as a single parent.
So she began a movement to establish a special day to
honor her father and all fathers. In 1909 she asked
her minister to have a special church service on June 5th (her
father’s birthday) dedicated to fathers. That date was too soon for the
minister to prepare a service, so he deferred it to the third Sunday of June
that year.
On
June 19th 1910 the first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, WA.
In 1924, President Coolidge recommended that Father’s Day be a national holiday
celebrating fatherhood and male parenting. In 1966, President
Johnson declared Father's Day a holiday to be celebrated on the 3rd
Sunday of June. In 1972, in the middle of a hard fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father's Day a federal holiday at last. On Father’s Day it
is customary to wear a red rose for a living father and a white
rose for a deceased father.
Fatherhood - another important family value
When President
Bill Clinton (of the notorious Monica Lewinsky scandal) was
moving out of the White House, the campaign rhetoric of some for choosing the
next president leaned heavily upon sexual integrity as an optimal family value
“especially for the one who is to occupy the Oval Office and be the leader of
the free world.” We recall how the Clinton scandal consumed
two years of the nation’s time, money and energy, and it practically brought
the US Congress to a standstill on the business of the people.
Others
have their own prioritization of family values. They stress such things as a good education, a decent family wage, good health insurance
for hard-working citizens, etc. They feel those values deserved at least
equal time with sexual integrity. Because fatherlessness is a very significant
family and social problem facing the nation on this Father’s Day 2012, and as
the presidential election of 2012 is already underway, we add another important
family value to the list: Fatherhood.
A no-brainer
A laid-back and cavalier attitude about fatherlessness infiltrates our culture. At the end of the day, however, fathers are not like luxury options on new cars - - nice to have but you can get along just fine without them. They are not like ice-cube-makers on our modern refrigerators - - nice to have but you can get along just fine without them. It’s a no-brainer to say that fathers are much more important than luxury options or ice-cube-makers.
A no-brainer
A laid-back and cavalier attitude about fatherlessness infiltrates our culture. At the end of the day, however, fathers are not like luxury options on new cars - - nice to have but you can get along just fine without them. They are not like ice-cube-makers on our modern refrigerators - - nice to have but you can get along just fine without them. It’s a no-brainer to say that fathers are much more important than luxury options or ice-cube-makers.
Again, it’s a no-brainer
to say it’s important for
a child to have a father, and for a mother to have a partner to help her bring her
new-born infant to full potential. The Child born to
Mary had something in common with many children today: Jesus also started out without
a father. But even heaven knows how important fathers are; so heaven gave Jesus
a father in Joseph. That was more justice than it was judgment - justice to the
infant Jesus and to mother Mary.
Parenting - not `space science’
Despite
the volumes which psychiatrists write on the subject, the art of male parenting
isn’t `space science.’ The awesome undertaking
of fatherhood doesn’t
require sophisticated strategies. A poster
shows a busy dad who has taken time to go fishing with his young son in a
rowboat on a placid lake. It's
early in the morning, and there's a faint mist still on the water. The son is
holding a fishing pole, and the father is standing over him. Underneath the
poster are written these words: “Take time to be present. Make time to be
present.”
That isn’t `space science.’
Dads who didn’t have time
A friend writes,
“My Dad was a hard worker, always steady and faithful in his role. When I was a
youngster he worked the p.m. shift as a machinist at Gehl Co. in West Bend. So he
really didn’t have time to be physically and emotionally present to us kids in
the evenings. That created a void which had a bad effect on us kids.”
Gary Rosberg also was a dad who didn’t have time to be physically and emotionally present to his daughter Sarah. When he was working on his doctoral thesis in counseling, she came into his study one day and showed him a sketch she had just drawn. She entitled it The Rosberg Family. Knee-deep in his thesis, the dad gave the picture a passing glance. When the daughter left the room, he gave the sketch a second glance. There he saw his wife Barb, his other daughter Missy and the family dog Katie. But no dad! He called his daughter back and asked, "Honey, where's daddy?" "Oh," she said nonchalantly, "you never have time; you’re always at the library.” It was a powerful moment of truth and grace for daddy Rosberg when told he wasn’t included in the family picture, because he was physically and emotionally absent to Sarah.
There are fathers who are absent simply because they have no choice but have to work the p.m. shift. And then there are fathers who are absent, either because they’re knee-deep earning a degree, or because they’re working their heads off to get a promotion in order to buy more creature comforts for the family, or because they’re simply busy at something that seems more important than being present to their kids.
All kinds
of good dads
After a long period of home hospice care, a
father died and his daughter gave the eulogy at this funeral. It read in part:
Dad, I recall at age 10 how frightened I was, terrified
really, that you were going to die. Just what would I do, how could I live
without my Dad? You were near death with a pulmonary condition. Many long weeks
were spent in the hospital. I prayed day and night for you to get well. Many
school recesses were spent in the chapel praying that the Blessed Mother would
make you well and bring you home. The day you returned home, I was filled with
elation. I always told you, Dad, you had work to do: you had to be my Dad.
When you expressed
doubts about your goodness, I assured you that you were good. You shared with
me your remorse over your drinking. Dad, you made it up to all of us, and more
than enough, and that has made a huge difference in all our lives. I shared
your experience with many detox patients who suffered remorse about what they
put their families through. You helped others without even knowing it. That is
your style, Dad: to make a BIG impact but to do it quietly!
There are all kinds of good dads – like the dad who had
remorse about his drinking, and who quietly made a big impact on others.
A father with a simple but expensive recipe
One
father had a very simple recipe for being a good father raising good sons. He
encouraged his four sons to do volunteer work in an animal shelter, cleaning
out dog and cat kennels. He had them enlist in a program socializing young
puppies in preparation for a program that would make them leader-dogs for the
blind. As this father rang a Salvation Army bell at Christmastime, he had his
sons accompany him by playing Christmas carols - one with a guitar, another
with a saxophone, a third with a French horn and a fourth with a key
board.
What
a simple recipe this father had for raising unselfish sons! It’s not
infallible, but it’s likely to be far more successful than buying your kid a
car for graduation. It’s certainly a lot cheaper. In another sense, however, it’s
a very expensive recipe; it presumes an unselfish spirit in the father himself.
An unselfish father hardly ever raises a selfish kid, for `The apple doesn’t
fall far from the tree.’ (That old saying, however, isn’t infallible.)
Conclusion
A message
for Father’s Day
There
are fathers who ‘are steady and faithful’ in their role as fathers but who are
absent from their kids because they have to work the night shift to make a
living for their families. (God bless those fathers!) And then there are
fathers who are absent from their kids because they’re
knee-deep earning a degree, or because they’re working their heads off to make more
money to buy more creature comforts for their families and themselves, or
because they simply think there’s something more important.
To
all dads who are very busy for one reason or other, this is the Father’s Day
message: Take time to be present to your kids. Yes, indeed, give them the things they need or think they need: a
nice house to live in, a good education, and all the tools and toys which the
commercials tell them they need. But
above all, give them the most important gift of all: your time!
And the other part of the Father’s Day message is this: If you don’t have time to be present to your kids, make time, as the busy father made time to go fishing with his young son in a rowboat on a placid lake. If you don’t have time to be present to your kids, make time; in the long run that could save you an ocean of time and tears.
