With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well. // 1 Thessalonians 2:8
There I was, with my husband, in daily Mass at our new parish with a day-old baby. As we walked out, there was Father Philip waiting for us. “You didn’t call me,” he said. “I gave you my number. I would have come to the hospital to give you a blessing.”
He had given us his number. I know now that he would have been happy to come visit, even in the middle of the night. But it hadn’t for a second occurred to me to call him from the hospital. I could see, though, that he was surprised—and maybe even a bit hurt—that we had neglected to let him know personally of our baby’s birth, and hadn’t gotten a blessing for mother and baby as soon as possible.
He couldn’t have been more pleasant and friendly about it all, but it was there. And in that one moment it all came washing over me, what it meant to call this man “father.” It wasn’t just another title. It was a relationship he took seriously. He was a spiritual father to me and to baby George and to every person in our parish.
We have a beautiful tapestry of Scripture in today’s Readings, highlighting the responsibilities of priests to their flock, and reminding the faithful of what a blessing it is to have good and holy priests among us. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus uses hyperbole to make a point (see Matthew 23:1-12). Many spiritual leaders in His time and ours claim to be teacher or father or master in order to profit from the honor and power that come with a title, without working to fulfill that role.* But, of course, we aren’t forbidden to call our natural fathers “father” and nor are we to refrain from referring to our true spiritual fathers as such.
Two years later, George was in the hospital again, with acute meningitis. Father Philip was the first person we called and he was there in minutes, as a father should be, to give us the Lord’s blessing.
Which good and holy spiritual fathers can we remember to thank today?
*Priests and spiritual leaders failing to live up to their calling to be spiritual fathers is a real tragedy; let us pray for healing of those who have been harmed and for the conversion of all priests to live out the call to holiness.
Kendra Tierney Norton is grateful to be a wife, mother, and stepmother. She lives in the wilds of unincorporated Los Angeles County in a big old fixer-upper house with her husband and a varying number of their combined fourteen children, plus one fish, two cats, and twenty chickens. She likes to say that her goal is keeping Catholicism weird. To that end, she is the author of books including the Catholic All Year Compendium: Liturgical Living for Real Life with Ignatius Press and O Come, Emmanuel: Advent Reflections on the Jesse Tree for Families with Emmaus Road Publishing, the creator of the TV series Catholic All Year At Home on FORMED, and the CEO of Catholic All Year, an apostolate dedicated to helping parents live out their Catholic faith and pass it along to their children.
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