A Man for Others
Wow. So that was a bit of hiatus… That’s the funny thing about blogs – at least for me – no matter how good the posts are and no matter how consistent they are for a time, I always find myself thinking, “We all know this is just a fad and it’s going to peter out and this blog will eventually just be another URL consigned to the scrapheap of history like Furbies and Billy the Singing Wall-mount Bass. But I digress…
Earlier this week I was cleaning my desk at home and rediscovered my 2018 goals. I made about eight or so goals back around New Years and I’m killing it on approximately two of them. The others not so much. One of them, if you’ll recall, was to read 12 books this year and to use my blog as a way of processing and sharing what I am reading. Well, let’s just say that this goal hasn’t proven to be one of the two that I’m succeeding at. But we’re all about second chances, right?
Well, over the past few weeks I read two books, one was a Eric Metaxas's biography of the great German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was martyred by the Nazis toward the close of World War II. His story and his theology of the poison of ‘cheap grace’ has been very much capturing my imagination, but it’s not the Bonhoeffer book I’m going to write about tonight.
The other book I finally finished was Meg Meeker’s Hero: Being the Strong Father Your Children Need. Meeker is a Christian of some stripe or other and is a pediatrician by training, but has published several great books on parenting. Hero is a super easy and practical read and is one that I highly recommend to any dads out there that want to succeed. I think I started it about 18 months ago, but let it fall by the wayside like I have so many other books over the years. Re-motivated by 2018 goals (and my abiding fear of failure), I polished it off this week and, man, am I glad that I did. Let’s dive in.
During a recent lunch meeting with some peers we were playing a game called hot-seat in which each participant is on the hot-seat for 90 seconds during which everyone else gets to ask them anything they want. Someone asked me the incredibly insightful questions of “what is your least favorite trait in others?” and “what is your favorite trait in others?” Instinctively, I responded selfishness and selflessness. Ever since then I’ve been spending a lot of time chewing on that and thinking about the people I most admire through that lens.
Last weekend, Bishop Powers preached on the reckless love of the Father. He has mentioned this in homilies before, but it struck an even deeper nerve this time given the recent train of my thoughts. He quoted the passage in Paul where he talks about how possibly for a good man we might be willing to lay down our lives, but while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And then took it a step further and asked, what kind of reckless love would a father have to have to lay down his son’s life for us. He repeated multiple times that we cannot begin to fathom the depth of the love of our God – of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We frequently sing the worship song Good, Good Father at our diocesan youth events and from time to time I get feedback from a participant or from a chaperone that that song can be difficult for people who’ve had bad experiences with their earthly fathers. Every time I hear that concern raised, it rends my heart; but I always answer that that is all the more reason to cherish the perfect, provident, merciful, tender Fatherhood of God, of which all earthly fatherhood – even at its best – is but a faint reflection.
Despite my sure short-comings, I am nevertheless called to reflect the Father's love as best as I can. Meeker’s book casts aside the Family Guy and Homer Simpson caricatures of fatherhood and lays out a noble vision culminating in a lofty, dare-I-say saintly ideal. In her view, fatherhood boils down to one word: selflessness.
I'll never forget something a priest said at a retreat I attended five or six years ago. It pierced me through and has stuck with me ever since. He said, ‘If you are married and have children, your job doesn’t end when you punch out or when you pull back into the driveway; it doesn’t end when the kids are fed, or the dishes are cleaned up, when the kids are asleep; it doesn’t end after you’ve made time to have a meaningful interaction with your wife. If it ends at all this side of death, it ends when your head hits the pillow.’ At that point in my life we didn’t have children yet, but I remember feeling smothered by the possibility of my time not being my own, not being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted.
Now, five years, two toddlers, and a handful of significant trials later – I see that the married vocation is in fact a perfect formula for growth in holiness. It is filled with daily – sometimes hourly – opportunities for selflessness. I am ashamed at how seldom I take those opportunities, but, again, we’re all about second chances, right?
As I’ve ruminated on the winsomeness of selflessness – both as a character trait in and of itself and as a means of apostolic activity – I keep coming back to St. Maximilian Kolbe, who famously offered to take the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz. On account of his life of selfless deeds exemplified by his voluntary martyrdom St. Max was given the epitaph of “A Man for Others”. Love is patient and kind and so is selflessness. Selfless men don’t begrudge their gift of self. They give it readily, joyfully, confidently.
Regardless of our vocation (marriage, priesthood, consecrated life), what is authentic masculinity if not leading a life for others? All of the happiest men I know – again regardless of vocation – are the most selfless men I know. They are each of them “A Man for Others”. That’s my goal – and any of you who know me can laugh at the tremendous amount of work I have to do to get there. I pray that my gravestone (and those of all of my brothers in the fight for holiness) will be thusly inscribed.
Earlier this week I was cleaning my desk at home and rediscovered my 2018 goals. I made about eight or so goals back around New Years and I’m killing it on approximately two of them. The others not so much. One of them, if you’ll recall, was to read 12 books this year and to use my blog as a way of processing and sharing what I am reading. Well, let’s just say that this goal hasn’t proven to be one of the two that I’m succeeding at. But we’re all about second chances, right?
Well, over the past few weeks I read two books, one was a Eric Metaxas's biography of the great German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was martyred by the Nazis toward the close of World War II. His story and his theology of the poison of ‘cheap grace’ has been very much capturing my imagination, but it’s not the Bonhoeffer book I’m going to write about tonight.
The other book I finally finished was Meg Meeker’s Hero: Being the Strong Father Your Children Need. Meeker is a Christian of some stripe or other and is a pediatrician by training, but has published several great books on parenting. Hero is a super easy and practical read and is one that I highly recommend to any dads out there that want to succeed. I think I started it about 18 months ago, but let it fall by the wayside like I have so many other books over the years. Re-motivated by 2018 goals (and my abiding fear of failure), I polished it off this week and, man, am I glad that I did. Let’s dive in.
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Last weekend, Bishop Powers preached on the reckless love of the Father. He has mentioned this in homilies before, but it struck an even deeper nerve this time given the recent train of my thoughts. He quoted the passage in Paul where he talks about how possibly for a good man we might be willing to lay down our lives, but while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And then took it a step further and asked, what kind of reckless love would a father have to have to lay down his son’s life for us. He repeated multiple times that we cannot begin to fathom the depth of the love of our God – of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We frequently sing the worship song Good, Good Father at our diocesan youth events and from time to time I get feedback from a participant or from a chaperone that that song can be difficult for people who’ve had bad experiences with their earthly fathers. Every time I hear that concern raised, it rends my heart; but I always answer that that is all the more reason to cherish the perfect, provident, merciful, tender Fatherhood of God, of which all earthly fatherhood – even at its best – is but a faint reflection.
Despite my sure short-comings, I am nevertheless called to reflect the Father's love as best as I can. Meeker’s book casts aside the Family Guy and Homer Simpson caricatures of fatherhood and lays out a noble vision culminating in a lofty, dare-I-say saintly ideal. In her view, fatherhood boils down to one word: selflessness.
I'll never forget something a priest said at a retreat I attended five or six years ago. It pierced me through and has stuck with me ever since. He said, ‘If you are married and have children, your job doesn’t end when you punch out or when you pull back into the driveway; it doesn’t end when the kids are fed, or the dishes are cleaned up, when the kids are asleep; it doesn’t end after you’ve made time to have a meaningful interaction with your wife. If it ends at all this side of death, it ends when your head hits the pillow.’ At that point in my life we didn’t have children yet, but I remember feeling smothered by the possibility of my time not being my own, not being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted.Now, five years, two toddlers, and a handful of significant trials later – I see that the married vocation is in fact a perfect formula for growth in holiness. It is filled with daily – sometimes hourly – opportunities for selflessness. I am ashamed at how seldom I take those opportunities, but, again, we’re all about second chances, right?
As I’ve ruminated on the winsomeness of selflessness – both as a character trait in and of itself and as a means of apostolic activity – I keep coming back to St. Maximilian Kolbe, who famously offered to take the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz. On account of his life of selfless deeds exemplified by his voluntary martyrdom St. Max was given the epitaph of “A Man for Others”. Love is patient and kind and so is selflessness. Selfless men don’t begrudge their gift of self. They give it readily, joyfully, confidently.
Regardless of our vocation (marriage, priesthood, consecrated life), what is authentic masculinity if not leading a life for others? All of the happiest men I know – again regardless of vocation – are the most selfless men I know. They are each of them “A Man for Others”. That’s my goal – and any of you who know me can laugh at the tremendous amount of work I have to do to get there. I pray that my gravestone (and those of all of my brothers in the fight for holiness) will be thusly inscribed.
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