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Fr. Jordi Rivero padre@catolico.org

This page is for all men who love God enough to be willing to commit their daily lives to Christ as His disciples. Men who seek the grace to renounce to sin to be filled with the Holy Spirit and fulfill their mission in their families and in the world.

Fathers are called to be the presence of Christ the shepherd in their families.
Fr. Jordi Rivero

Fathers are first called to be sons of God. Only being good sons can they become good fathers and husbands. They must learn from Christ who, being the obedient Son of the Father, loved his bride, the Church, unto the cross. Fathers are to be the presence of Christ to their family and to the world!   

Fathers are Christ's apostles of the domestic Church. That means that it is not enough for them to be nice men and pass as decent men in our culture. Christian fathers must represent Christ in the family and can only do so if they have Christ's mind and heart. Now this is a tall order. No one has reached the goal, but, like St. Paul, fathers must run the race towards Christ every day. It is by engaging intensively in this effort that true manliness is attained. According to this criteria, we can see that there is a crisis of manliness.

Only in the Lord do we find the confidence and grace to rise up to the task. In Christ, fathers are the shepherds, the spiritual heads of the family. The sheep learn to trust and follow when the shepherd's voice is a clear and true guide to better pastures, when he leads by example, shows his love in action and is consistent.
 
In Christ they are the priests of their family. As such, they offer themselves everyday as victims of love embracing the daily crosses for the sake of their families. So they must lay down their lives for their wives and children.

In Christ they exercise the authority and strength which God gave them fully at the service of the family in terms of protection and work. They are to imitate Christ who came to serve and not to be served. It is shameful for a man to use his superior strength to intimidate his wife and children. This can happen not only by use of physical force but also by threats and shouts. A man should never scream at his family unless there is a fire. Perhaps men do not realize how they hurt their family when they impose themselves by force.

Fathers have a fundamental and irreplaceable roll in the family. If fathers are missing or if they neglect their mission, shifting the burden of Christian leadership on their wives, there are serious consequences.

Christian men need to support each other knowing that they face a great battle to submit their own flesh, grow in their vocation and to defend the family from the ways of the world.

In "The Soul of the Apostolate", Pope St. Pius X's bedside book, we read: "So long as we have not made the fathers of families not only into Christians but also into apostles, the influence of Christian mothers, great as it is, will be obstructed or short-lived, and we will never set the Social Kingdom of Christ on a firm basis."