Yesterday’s post was a veritable smorgasbord of mistakes. Humilitas infinita. 🙂 This post, from 2014, is hopefully better. I thought I would share again in honor of our yesterday’s celebration of Father’s Day. Ten years later, it’s something to read.
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Above is my oldest guitar-wielding daughter.
Having a teen and a tween daughter is definitely a vocation within a vocation for a parent. A parent’s pink martyrdom.
Yet, as my dear and wise friend Ellen Murphy often said to me, “There’s beauty in every age.”
It’s really hard for me to let go of their ebbing childhood. What will that feel like when I succumb?
I remember several years ago when one of my daughters gave me a hand painted piece of construction paper for Father’s Day that said on it:
Dad is a Son’s First Hero and a Daughter’s First Love.
Good grief. Why are dads legally allowed to read such things in public?
Who am I to deserve this? Terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Tout est grâce.
My wife said to me later that night:
TomNeal, do you have any idea how powerful your love for your girls is? Don’t ever underestimate it.
I try not to. God grant me sufficient grace.
And a priest in Confession once echoed her words to me that inspired me to write this later:
God’s entrusted those children to you to carve his Face deep into their memories. “Who sees you seeks the Father.” You will be judged on this. Be a good artist and make Him recognizable.
Like death, such words concentrate the mind wonderfully. St. John Paul II echoed this gravitas:
Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command, but attempts to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.
Fatherhood, my life’s sweetest joy. O God, may my Enemy, the orphan-maker, never abolish fatherhood in me. May I live worthy of such a high calling. Imago Patris.
Neal Obstat Theological Opining 
G’day, brother Tom,
I remember this post well. I had been following you for about a year when I saw this and responded, wholeheartedly agreeing with you about the magnificent joy found within fatherhood. Better yet, being Daddy! If I remember correctly, you did me the honor of posting my comment in its entirety in one of your later posts. I remain humbled to this day by your most gracious treatment of my response.
The last line, a beautiful prayer, still resonates deep within my soul even ten years later, much as the tolling of the Sunday bells of Notre Dame du Paris do although it has been decades since my last visit there with my two sons and their wives.
Fatherhood, my life’s sweetest joy. O God, may my Enemy, the orphan-maker, never abolish fatherhood in me. May I live worthy of such a high calling. Imago Patris.
Thanks for reposting on Fathers’ Day on which I was blessed to hear “I love you, Dad” from each of our children! A sound I never tire of hearing.
Peace and blessings, my friend.
DD
Tom, Thanks for all of your posts. I will send this one to my Daughter with a boy and girl, and to my Son with a brand new baby girl. Peace and Love to You, Patti, and the family.