The role of the father of the family in fostering vocations.
Dear faithful and in particular fathers of families,
As you know, we have wished to dedicate this holy year to prayers and efforts necessary for fostering vocations, and one cannot speak of fostering vocations without speaking of the family. Our Lord Himself, Priest par excellence, from the moment of His Incarnation, wished to grow up in a family, in order to sanctify it in a special and exemplary way. It goes without saying that the example of domestic virtues is, in a certain way, the first seminary and the first noviciate of every soul that God calls to His service.
We would like to offer a few reflections on the more specific role of the father of the family. In the modern world, everything conspires to destroy his authority, but now more than ever it is his responsibility and mission that are more and more denatured by what we will call, for the sake of simplicity, contemporary ‘wokism’. The man and the woman, the husband and the wife seem today to have identical roles and equivalent responsibilities, which generates total confusion and a foul atmosphere. Those who must be brought up to grow into adults and to one day assume responsibilities themselves are the first victims of this terrible confusion. Once more, nothing except the Gospel can re-establish the order that modernity has destroyed.
The starting point
What advice then can one give to a father of a family eager to bring up his children well and to allow one or more vocations to bloom in his family? First of all, it is not simply a matter of doing this or avoiding that. It is firstly a matter of living habitually in the dispositions of faith and charity, because a vocation is a response to the call of God, which presupposes a supernatural perspective and, at the same time, a limitless generosity in giving to the Good Lord all that we are. From these habitual dispositions the corresponding actions and behaviour will naturally flow.
Saint Paul gives us the key to understand where we must begin. It is the demand that the husband love his wife with the same love that Our Lord manifested towards His Church: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: That he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish.” (Eph 5:25–27).
It goes without saying that love of one’s spouse also overflows on one’s children. It is first of all in observing how his father loves and treats his mother that an adolescent discovers, far more that we can imagine, what is on earth the image of the generosity of the love of Our Lord. If one day God calls him to His service, he must himself be — in a way still greater and yet rather different — the image of the same love and the same authority. Let us try therefore to see what the love of the father signifies in relation to his wife and to God.
True love, which is the basis of this great ideal that Our Lord communicates to each father of a family, can be summed up in three fundamental acts, which assimilate all others. First of all, love presupposes that we know the thing beloved in depth: we see it, we contemplate it, we admire it: it inspires our profound respect, proportionate to our degree of love. Finally, true love pushes us to act with an absolute devotion and spirit of service.
Admiration
First of all, a husband is supposed to admire his wife as the one that God wanted for him and has chosen to be the mother of his children, and his only irreplaceable aid to help him, as much in his mission as head of the family, as in his duty to sanctify his soul. The wife is first of all seen and admired as a gift of God, endowed with qualities that, for her part, allow her to fulfil the mission of wife and mother.
Also, through her, the husband’s admiration naturally extends to God’s plan for the family, to divine laws and finally to God Himself and His wisdom. This transcendent perspective must be ever deepened down the years. There is nothing which marks the soul of a child or an adolescent more than growing up with this example before his eyes: this allows him to become ever more conscious of his place in God’s plan – both very humble and very dependant – and to understand that he is nonetheless called by God to very great things, in the very measure of this dependence.
It goes without saying that this admiration must be communicated to the child not only on the natural level, in relation to the grandeur and perfection of the laws of creation, but above all in everything which relates to the mysteries of God and religion. Here we touch directly on the fruit of the sacramental grace of marriage, which gives Christian marriage a dimension completely unknown to purely natural marriage. Very often, the mysteries of God and the duties of religion might seem insipid, because they are lived in a way that is routine, passive and without any penetrating effort on the father’s part. We must not be surprised if the same passivity and lack of enthusiasm is then found in the children. Effectively, a lack of admiration prevents us from having an ideal and living up to it in order to communicate it to others. What should be an ideal will then be transformed into something abstract — a supplementary notion to learn by heart, but without having the capacity to put one’s heart into it, because the heart is preoccupied with other things. A father of a family who knows and who lives the truths of the faith, who speaks to his children about the catechism, the example of the saints and the love of Our Lord, continually feeds — in and around himself — the ideal on which everything else hangs. He will easily find topics of conversation which are always interesting and help his children escape from the omnipresent pitfalls of banality and vulgarity.
But once again, it is very striking to notice how God is sought and contemplated in correspondence to a wife admired in a way worthy of a Christian: there is nothing more efficacious for the moral formation of an adolescent than to see these two acts of love harmoniously complement each other in the person of his father.
Respect
Next, true love engenders respect. A child will respect his mother if he sees his father doing the same. This respect on the part of the father impregnates his whole relationship with his wife: the way he speak to her and about her, the way he considers her and treats her. It is not purely and simply a question of good manners, a merely formal sort of conjugal politeness. It is rather a matter of the external expression of a profound love which spontaneously conditions all relationships. It goes without saying that this profound respect finds in purity both its foundation and its most elevated expression. It is impossible to love one’s wife as Our Lord loves His Church unless this is done in purity. There is nothing like this virtue for keeping conjugal life healthy and infallibly manifesting the respect due to a wife. It conditions language and everyday attitudes. It pushes the father to be vigilant in order to drive away from the home anything which could in some way tarnish the atmosphere of respect and purity.
All this must, quite obviously, be so much more foundational in a family’s relationship to all that is sacred: the law of God, its demands, the duties which flow from it, especially with respect to consecrated persons. There is nothing more efficacious to destroy future vocations than a lack of respect towards holy things and persons. From the beginning, the Revolution has tried to discredit the Church and ridicule her mysteries, exploiting as much as possible the faults of her members. This is a tactic which unfortunately still works. It owes its effectiveness to this striking and diabolical association between the sacred and all that is most reprehensible in human nature. We must not give in to this temptation by slipping into a spirit of criticism that will inflict hidden but irreparable wounds on children. These wounds will fuel either indifference or mistrust.
Maintaining respect for all that is sacred — both people and things — does not mean justifying weakness and disfunction. It simply means loving the Church as Our Lord loves her: for what she is and for what, in her, continues to sanctify and save souls, despite the too-human faults of her members and the efforts of her enemies to hinder her work. This is an extremely important and delicate point, on which a father of a family must always keep watch and examine himself.
Of course, neither does respecting all that is sacred mean simply abstaining from criticising or despising it; it is for the father of a family to positively show an unconditional, joyous and sincere obedience to the laws of God and of the Church – the faithful echo of Our Lord obeying His Father always and in all things. In addition, it is for him not only to give the example but to perfect it and paternally lead other members of his family to it. His authority is entrusted to him to this end: to make respected the order of the sacred established by God, with a gentle intransigence, conscientiously living up to the mission with which he has been invested.
Devotion
Finally, true love leads to devotion. In the full and Christian sense of the term, devotion signifies something quite precise: the giving of self. This is what it leads to. Once again, it is firstly towards his wife that a father of a family is supposed to show this generosity. He does so without measure; he willingly devotes himself to her who is confided to him. He generously accepts his limitations, faults and weaknesses without falling into bitterness and recrimination. Nothing in family life can drive him to discouragement because everything is accepted and lived as a gift of God. Love and selfishness are two radically opposed terms. Here again, Our Lord is the perfect example of the Spouse who has loved the Church first, without measure and without any other goal than to purify it, enrich it morally and save it.
In everyday life, this devotion will take a thousand different forms, according to extremely varied circumstances, but always in the name of the same charity.
It goes without saying that this devotion of the father of the family must be translated particularly into acts flowing from the virtue of religion, inside and outside the family. There are multiple ways to do this and we would like to highlight one in particular: prayer in common with the family. Very often, this is neglected. Too often it is considered as being first the role of the mother, with which the other members of the family are only associated. This is false and constitutes a grave failing in a father of a family. There is nothing more necessary and more striking for a child that to see his father come back from work and kneel down with his children with his rosary in his hand. Naturally, he will be driven to follow his father’s example for his whole life, above all in the midst of trials and in moments of fatigue. If God calls him, he will be ready to respond.
The spirit of sacrifice
We cannot persevere in family prayer every day without a true spirit of sacrifice. Each evening, everyone has things still to do and is tired, except perhaps the little ones who do not yet know how to truly pray, but who run around until bedtime. In a good father, the spirit of sacrifice prevails. He loves his wife, his children and his God too much to let himself go. He refuses to give up.
His generosity pushes him to give himself, as much as he can, to help the parish and, more generally, all those to whom he can give something, even outside his family. It is not a question of undertaking great works but simply of being ready to offer a little of his time and talents, often discreetly. Inevitably, the first to benefit from this generosity shown outside the family are really the children themselves. They have before their eyes the example of a good father who, without depriving them of anything, finds the energy to radiate and give himself beyond his family also. This example will prepare them to practice the same generosity, in whichever way God chooses for them.
What the Church’s Magisterium tells us
Pope Pius XI, more than anyone else, emphasized the indispensable role of the family in fostering vocations. Here, by way of a conclusion, is what he taught us in his encyclical Ad catholici sacerdotii of 20th December 1935:
“But the first and most natural place where the flowers of the sanctuary should almost spontaneously grow and bloom, remains always the truly and deeply Christian family. Most of the saintly bishops and priests whose ‘praise the Church declares’, owe the beginning of their vocation and their holiness to example and teaching of a father strong in faith and manly virtues, of a pure and devoted mother, and of a family in which the love of God and neighbor, joined with simplicity of life, has reigned supreme. […]
“In an ideal home the parents, like Tobias and Sara, beg of God a numerous posterity ‘in which Thy name may be blessed forever,’ and receive it as a gift from heaven and a precious trust; they strive to instil into their children from their early years a holy fear of God, and true Christian piety; they foster a tender devotion to Jesus, the Blessed Sacrament and the Immaculate Virgin; they teach respect and veneration for holy places and persons. In such a home the children see in their parents a model of an upright, industrious and pious life; they see their parents holily loving each other in Our Lord, see them approach the Holy Sacraments frequently and not only obey the laws of the Church concerning abstinence and fasting, but also observe the spirit of voluntary Christian mortification; they see them pray at home, gathering around them all the family, that common prayer may rise more acceptably to heaven; they find them compassionate towards the distress of others and see them divide with the poor the much or the little they possess.
“In such a home it is scarcely possible that, while all seek to copy their parents’ example, none of the sons should listen to and accept the invitation of the Divine Master: ‘Come ye after Me, and I will make you to be fishers of men.’ Blessed are those Christian parents who are able to accept without fear the vocations of their sons, and see in them a signal honor for their family and a mark of the special love and providence of Our Lord. Still more blessed, if, as was often the case in ages of greater faith, they make such divine visitations the object of their earnest prayer.”
May God bless you.
Menzingen, 8th June 2025, on the feast of Pentecost
Don Davide Pagliarani, Superior General
