I became a father at twenty-eight. But I don’t have my own children—that’s because I’m a priest.
A father gives life: not just the biological beginnings, but also the strengthening and guiding its growth requires. I first learned wisdom, virtue, and diligence from my own father, a hardworking and wise man, who sacrificed time and effort to raise and teach his six children. I owe much of my life now to what he gave me.
As a father, a priest gives life too, and more than his own. He gives the very life of God. That’s what it means for me to be a father. In the waters of baptism, I pour the divine life of grace into souls, making sons and daughters of God. From the pulpit, I try to teach what it means to be children of God and how to mature in this identity. At the altar, I offer the greatest possible prayer for God’s children and feed them with his Body. In the confessional, I apply the medicine of God’s mercy to the cuts and bruises sins leave in the soul.
The more a priest can say—the more I can say—with Saint Paul, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20), the better a father he is, because he can give God’s children the One who is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6).
