For Fathers…

Much of life is made up of things we think we will one day do: of things we postpone, of things we set aside, of things we leave too late. And one of the things we could best determine to do would be for fathers and sons (and daughters) to draw a little nearer, to come a little closer ⎯ to take a little more time for a closer kind of companionship with those who mean the most.

Too many of us wait too long for the cherished times together, for the intimate outings, for the quiet hours of an evening, for the fuller talking out of important personal problems with the close confidence of an understanding heart. It is not so much the sending; it is not so much the preaching of the precepts; it is not altogether, even, the providing ⎯ but the going with, the doing with, the being with that brings a closer kind of kinship.

Fathers are often too closely confined to the business of providing things physical and financial. Often in their daily pursuits, they live competitive lives to make the means to help to make the home ⎯ to provide the things by which their loved ones may better live. And being preoccupied with pressure and problems, they may sometimes leave some things too late.

One day all of us, alike, will stand before the Father of us all, to give an account of what we have done with what we have had. And when that day comes for all of us, God grant that, through the useful virtue of our lives, we shall be an honor to our earthly fathers as well as to “the Father of [our] spirits” ⎯ that we shall be such sons and daughters that He could say also of us: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

God bless the fathers who have faced the world for us in many ways, and grant that there may be a closer kind of companionship between fathers and daughters and sons ⎯ that fathers may have a fuller sense of being father, and that sons may have a finer sense of being sons ⎯ and that both may seek to see and do the things for one another that are sometimes left too late.