Gerald at The Cafeteria is Closed asks a good question: What’s so great about children?
Now, don’t misunderstand him. Gerald makes it clear that he understands the Church’s teachings on marriage and family and agrees with them and that he knows and understands the objective reasoning. What he wants is the subjective response: “Why do YOU love being a dad?”
Consider Gerald’s position : He is the only child of only children and admittedly has spent no time around children. How can he know firsthand about children except what he sees in the media?
My wife Melanie just sent me a link to a beautiful video of a song by Billy Ray Cyrus called “Face of God”, in which he sings about his love for his daughter and how, when he sees her, he sees the face of God.
What if—in a figurative sense—we catch a glimpse of the face of God when look into the face of our daughter or son? What if the love between father and daughter (or mother and son and all the permutations) is the purest form of human love and thus is itself the closest yet flimsiest essence of the Divine Love? (While married love is awesome, let’s face it that for all of us it is the love between two sinners, whereas in the love between parent and child, one of you is sinless and thus loves with a pure heart.)
[Crossposted at Catholic Dads]Technorati Tags: Catholic | parenting | fatherhood | children |
