Читать книгу Listen My Son - Dwight Longenecker - Страница 8

When St Benedict says, ‘Listen my son to the advice of a loving father’ he calls us into an intimate child-parent relationship. The need to be nurtured and guided through life doesn't cease when we reach the magic age of eighteen. In every stage of life we need the wisdom, concern and love of a father figure. If we are fathers ourselves, the need for a mentor is even greater. We cannot be good fathers if we do not have a good father in our own life.

Jesus taught us to call God ‘father’ and this teaching flowed from his own intimate relationship with God the father. Jesus called God ‘Abba’ or ‘papa’. With such an intimate term he reveals the tenderness and strength which should exist between fathers and children, and between us and our heavenly father. In recent years the concept of fatherhood has lost its attraction, and some people view fathers as the source of every ill in society. Of course many have suffered at the hands of poor fathers. Many have also suffered from inadequate mothering. But the failure of some fathers does not negate the need for positive, potent and compassionate fatherhood. Indeed bad fathering makes the need for good fathers even more acute. The foundation of successful fathering is a living relationship with God the Father. It is only from a dynamic spiritual relationship with him that human fathers can hope to do their very best for their children.

This primary relationship with God the Father can be nurtured and developed through the spiritual fathers we find within the family of the church. In a spiritual director or wise confessor God gives us a spiritual father to help us on our journey. Like St Jospeh, our spiritual director adopts us as his own. He protects and provides for us until we reach maturity. St Benedict has been a spiritual father for countless men and women for well over fifteen hundred years. Through his little rule generations of monks, nuns and lay people have heard the voice of a wise and loving father who wishes to guide them to perfection.

A guide for fathers is vital today since fatherhood has been so neglected. Christian fathers especially need resources to foster their paternal role. Many men in our society are confused and bewildered by a whole array of contradictory expectations. Short-term contracts, performance-related pay and high pressure competition pushes fatherhood into second place. On the one hand, the ‘new man’ is expected to be the perfect father and husband, while the voices of those who may have been injured by bad fathering often portray all fathers as domineering villains.

Quick divorce and re-marriage, along with the financial attraction of co-habitation, and a mentality which separates sexuality from procreation encourage many men to avoid marriage and fatherhood altogether, or to walk out on the family once the stresses of real family life begin to develop. The younger generation of men can hardly be blamed. Many young men are themselves the product of broken homes, where in most cases it was the father who was the absent parent. Without a father it is impossible for them to be fathers.

However, within this grim scenario there is cause for great hope. Fatherhood may be neglected and despised, but there are signs of a swing back. In all sorts of low-key ways men are returning to the priority of parenting. In larger enterprises which cross cultural and religious boundaries men are being encouraged to take their domestic responsibilities seriously; to return to their families and to take up the challenge of compassionate leadership within the home. Men who have been excluded from their homes and children by harsh divorce laws are fighting back for the rights of fathers. Through marriage guidance, counselling and self-help programmes thousands of men are learning new ways of relating to their wives and families, and finding renewal in the heart of their homes. In addition, an increasing number of firms are recognizing the need for paternity leave, shorter hours and proper responses to family requirements; recognizing that a man who is fulfilled at home is a better and more productive worker. Many men who work for impersonal multinational firms are discovering that it is within family life that they have true identity, and there they discover a sense of belonging and a true vocation.

This return to fatherhood should not be seen as an attempt to turn the clock back. If an old patriarchy has died it is so that a better view of fatherhood can be resurrected. The new fatherhood is not a return to an antiquated patriarchy in which the man is king and the woman a mere chattel. Instead the new father is caring, involved and fully integrated into the life of the family. The new father relates with his wife on equal terms. There is a new interdependence and complementary self-giving which recognizes the advances in women's self-understanding as well as the demands of modern society. If the mother has had a more formative role on children in recent years, then the new father is now sharing that function in full partnership with her. If she shares the bread-winning, then he shares in the child-care. The new father is there not as the king, but as the servant–king. In fact, while this approach to fatherhood seems new, it is there in the Scriptural pattern for marriage, and St Benedict points to it in his chapter on mutual obedience. The new fatherhood does not expect obedience or respect by right, but earns respect and obedience by self-sacrifice and compassionate leadership.

This kind of fatherhood is hard work, but it pays rich dividends. Not only is the man rewarded with loyal and loving children as he grows older, but he also enjoys a deepening and more profound relationship with his wife. In addition, his children go out into the world brimming with confidence and strength from his contribution.

Finally, it is easy to see the decay and confusion in modern life and to run for cover. The instinctive response of Christian parents may be to construct a family fortress against the wicked world. But while the home is a place of refuge, it is also a place of preparation and interaction with the wider world. Parents will best protect their children from the destructive forces in the world not by running away from them, but by equipping their children to engage with the world in a creative and dynamic way. In fact, there may be no more effective way to make the world a better place than for men and women to take their responsibility as parents seriously, and so contribute members of society who are responsible, compassionate and confident.

Christian parents help to redeem and transform the world by building a good home, for good homes are the building blocks of a solid, prosperous and peaceful society. When this calling to parenthood is linked with a strong Christian vision, the home, as Tertullian said, becomes the ‘seminary of the human race’, and the Christian father and mother find in their parental roles a path which leads to heaven.

The Christian family can be the place for the soul's training because it is, by its nature, a Christian community. A person may choose a convent or a monastery to join, but they cannot choose every monk they have to live with; neither can they choose every successive abbot or abbess to whom they must vow obedience. Likewise, we may choose our wives or husbands, but we can't choose all our in-laws and we certainly can't choose our children. They are given to us and we must learn to live with them in community. Since Jesus first called twelve men to live in intimate community with him, the Church has been a family, a community, a Kingdom of God. So it is with the natural family: we find within our own home all the necessary ingredients for progress in the Christian life.

St John has written, ‘Those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’ So within the love of the Christian family the father can come to understand and dwell in all wisdom. Through his love with his wife, the two share in a union which is as intimate as the one Christ shares with his Church. Through their relationship with the children a three-way bond is nurtured which takes each family member into a love which reflects the Holy Trinity itself, for there Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist in the perfect unity of the Divine Family. The ordinary Christian home is part of the God-given sacrament of marriage, and as in all sacraments it is a physical means of meeting the invisible God face to face.

This is a high ideal. It sounds mystical and sublime. But the reality often seems far from celestial. Being a parent is a gritty, realistic and demanding vocation. Our lives are rooted in the physical and emotional needs of small children. We need to be equipped for Christian fatherhood. There are many resources for spiritual growth, but not many which combine the practical demands of fatherhood with the aspirations of the spiritual journey. Some books are full of practical advice on parenting while others take us on a wonderful, but too other-worldly, journey of spirituality. Not many books combine practical advice with spiritual insight. The Rule of St Benedict, more than any other, combines the two into a fully incarnational guide to life.