FATHERS ACTING AS SPIRITUAL HEADS OF FAMILIES

FATHERS ACTING AS SPIRITUAL HEADS OF FAMILIES Father’s Day 2024 Fr Luke A Veronis   My father passed away a year ago. We are celebrating his one year memorial today in our Church here in Webster, and in two weeks in Lancaster, PA. I think of my father often and thank God every day for blessing me with such an incredible role model in my life. Fr. Alexander Veronis exemplified for me all that he ever preached during his 64 years as a priest. As a good and faithful servant of Jesus Christ, ·      He loved God above all else. ·      He taught me that loving and serving God implies loving and serving one another, especially the least of our brothers and sisters. ·      He always saw God’s reflection in the other. ·      He reflected a generous spirit of compassion, kindness, mercy, and grace to all people. He lived a life of gratitude that led to generosity. ·      He knew that God was always with him and radiated a joy that would never let anything discourage him. My dad lived an admirable, Christ-centered life. How many of us can say that about our fathers? I know I’ve been truly blessed. In a day and age, when it seems like our society is turning away from the value of family and confusing the worth of fathers and mothers, it’s appropriate that our country celebrates Father’s Day today, as we did Mother’s Day a month ago. I am grateful to God for my own father, while I also reflect on fatherhood as a sacred institution and as one of the most important components of humanity throughout history. For all the fathers, future fathers, and father figures in our church, pay extra attention today and ruminate on the incredible privilege and responsibility you have as a father. It’s not by chance that the Church has called the Almighty Creator of the Universe, the Giver of Life, the Eternal One, “Our Heavenly Father.” Of course, our Triune God is beyond gender. He is the ultimate and infinite Mystery. Yet, in the community of faith from ancient Israel to the new Israel, the Church, God has been revealed as the premier model of a Father figure – a loving, merciful, generous, compassionate, grace-filled, giving, sacrificial Source of All Blessings, a Provider, Benefactor and Protector. He is the perfect Father. As we celebrate Father’s Day today, and honor our fathers and the father-figures in our lives, dare we fathers reflect on such a Heavenly Father and strive to imitate His virtues? It’s interesting how Saint Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, describes the great Mystery of Marriage, by noting how husbands and future fathers are called to become the head of their wives as Christ is the head of the Church. Now, I know that our contemporary society feels uncomfortable and even gets upset at this teaching of St. Paul. Every time we read this passage in our Orthodox marriage ceremony, someone will say to me that the church is being chauvinistic and outdated. How dare we say the father is the head of the wife and family. Yet, take care to focus on what St. Paul is actually saying. The Great Apostle equates marriage to a great mystery – the mystery of Jesus Christ and His relationship with His Church. This is a relationship of ultimate, divine love. When St. Paul compares the husband (and father) to Christ and wives (and mothers) to the Church, He is giving both spouses an impossible calling to divine love. Husbands (and fathers) are called to imitate Jesus Christ and wives (and mothers) are called to imitate the Church. What a beautiful goal to strive for!  “As Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, thus husbands should love their wives,” St. Paul writes. How did Jesus love the Church? By sacrificing his life for her. By humbling Himself and washing her feet. By constantly giving of Himself. By placing her needs before His own. By doing everything necessary in order to lift up the Church into His Kingdom. By helping her in her journey of salvation towards God. And ultimately by dying for her. This is the type of headship the husband and father is called to live up to. You see, when St. Paul exhorted the husband to act as the head of his wife and spiritual leader of his family, he was not giving the father some special privilege. Instead, he was placing the cross of Christian headship upon the man. He was calling the father to be ready to die for his wife and family, to fulfill his role in doing whatever is necessary to ensure that His family join him on the path that leads into the Kingdom of Heaven. On the final day of judgement, I know that Pres. Faith and I will either enter paradise together, or not at all. It’s not one or the other; it’s not an individual journey. Our journey is a journey together! And I am going to do whatever I can to ensure that we grow, we struggle up that spiritual ladder, and we walk forward hand-in-hand towards the Kingdom of God. And in as much as is in my ability, I will try to teach this way and show the same path to each of my children. Here lies the single most important role of the father! This is what it means to be the head of the family. It’s an incredible responsibility and privilege that we possess, and today, on this Father’s Day, I want to lift up this essential spiritual dimension of the day. We can mention many things that fathers should strive to do in their lives – to love their wives, to be present and available to their children, to support and care for their families, to be the protector of their homes, and yet before all other responsibilities, in fact above all other callings in life, the father’s greatest responsibility is to “seek first the Kingdom of God.” On this Father’s Day, I want all the fathers here present to pause and think for a moment – when our wives reflect on our lives, when our children ponder the legacy that are creating in our lives, will they think about a person who always “sought first the Kingdom of God?” Will they be grateful to God for having husbands and fathers that showed them how to walk on the path that leads into paradise? Will our children fondly remember how we prayed, how we brought them to Church each week, how we reflected the Christian virtues of mercy and forgiveness, compassion and generosity, how we incarnated God’s love in concrete ways to the world around us? I’m afraid that too many fathers will be remembered for watching the ball game, for skipping church to play golf, for wasting time in unedifying entertainment such as going to the casinos, for being the tough guy who didn’t have time for the one thing essential. Why is it that too often in our churches, women are the pillars of faith, the ones always in church, the ones who seem more serious about their salvation while the men are absent? Thank God for the women throughout history who have kept the faith and loved the world in sacrificial ways! Yet today on Father’s Day, at least here in the Church, our call is to remind and challenge our fathers to live up to their role as spiritual heads of their household! Be true men, in a godly sense, and fulfill your calling as saints! Fathers, and yes Mothers, don’t give in to the weak image of parenthood that contemporary films and movies often ridicule. Our modern society is confused about the ultimate importance of both fathers and mothers and the sacred institution of the family. As the old proverb says, “A father is worth more than a hundred school masters.” Ultimately, the most important lessons that a father can teach his children, and by far the most lasting legacy we can leave our progeny, are for fathers to place God first in their lives, to teach their household by showing them how to love the Lord our God and leading them on the path that takes them up the heights into the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m grateful I had a father who did that for me. I’m striving to be that type of father for my own children and all my spiritual children. And I want to invite all our fathers to accept this difficult yet most blessed challenge. A most blessed and joyous Father’s Day to all fathers everywhere!