A number of years ago, I was on the national board for a group of Religious men and women engaged in the spiritual formation of the members of our respective Orders and Congregations. During the two years that we all worked together, the father of one of the nuns in our group died. I was happy to be able to attend the funeral, which was in her hometown near Boston. This nun had two brothers who are priests, so these two priests celebrated the funeral Mass for their father; one presided at the liturgy, and the other preached. Something that priest said during his homily made a deep impression on me. Part way through the homily, looking down at their mother sitting sadly in the front pew, he said, “Without knowing it, Dad gave us children the greatest gift any father can give his children. He loved our mother.”

One of the great tasks in the life of us all, one that takes many years and costs much in terms of money and energy, is education. Governments are becoming frantic these days about what they perceive to be the poor education of our children. In almost every Canadian Province, there are mammoth efforts being made both to trim and to tailor educational systems so that they are not only cost effective, but also produce a good student, well-trained and prepared for the workplace. There is also much concern about the moral and values education of our young, so that they will be upright and honest citizens, concerned for the common good and willing to contribute to society at large. Unfortunately, one truth is often ignored in the midst of all this concern for schools, curriculum and teacher salaries – namely, that the first school every child attends is the home. The home is a school, where we learn not only the first things in life, but also the most important.

Personality is what makes each of us unique. Our interests and talents, our concerns and abilities, our dreams and goals ... all these make each of us into the person we are. The way we understand the world around us, and the way we relate to other people, are functions of our personality. Child psychologists are quick to point out that by the time any of us starts school, our personalities are very well formed ... in the school called family.

Let me give you a little example of this. My grandfather on my mother's side died when I was eleven. He never lived with us as such, but when I was young, he would spend a week or more with us each year. One of my few memories of these visits is an image of my grandfather sitting in an oversized rocking chair after finishing any meal, smoking his pipe. Now, according to all my aunts, even before I started school, one of their clearest images of me is sitting in a child-sized rocking chair, enjoying deep drags on my little toy pipe ... just like grandpa! There humorous anecdote underscores a profound truth – a small child's mind picks up an amazing amount of data about life and the world around them by seeing it done, hearing it said, and then repeating it themselves. Their family is the first school they're enrolled in.

The most essential thing a child learns in this domestic school is love. The child is not taught about love ... love is too abstract to be taught! But the child is taught nonetheless what loving relationships are all about.

The California couple, Joseph and Lois Bird, are not only marriage counselors, but have also raised a family of their own. In their writings, they corroborate this truth – we do not teach love, but model it. To borrow a phrase often used by religious educators – “faith is caught, not taught” – we know instinctively that it is by example that we model respect and trust, communication and sharing, forgiveness and affirmation. Imagine trying to define for someone what beauty is, someone who has no concept of it. You might speak effectively about shape and form, colours and contrast, movement and texture, but only when you apply examples in real life might they come to now what beauty is.

So it is with love. Poets over the ages have sung about love, written sonnets and verses that we quote to one another when our own words feel inadequate. To define love is not easy. It's known only by its many expressions. Even St. Paul uses many such adjectives in his famous and ever-favourite writing found in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13.

There are two disciplines at the heart of love and of family life that are worthy of some brief consideration. These are the disciplines of welcoming and letting go.

Welcoming: Have you ever noticed what happens when a new child comes home from the hospital? The attention that baby gets is enough to make anyone jealous! In fact, it is often the start of a sibling rivalry if there has already been another child around for a few years, with Mom and Dad all to himself. But the welcome of that child is an expression of love by the family. This is no idle invitation to "make yourself at home", let me assure you! Whether born to this family or adopted, the love showered on this child is genuine. That ability to welcome another doesn't stop here, however. It continues on into the rest of the family's life. Whether it is growing children's little friends, their boy- and girl-friends, the crowd they hang out with, or the special friend they think they might marry, the welcome that is given to others is an expression of that family's love. The art of welcoming (and it is an art), is not only a matter of supplying food and drink, but is especially the ability to receive another into your home and your heart. The other is made welcome but not crowded.

Letting go: As important as the discipline of welcoming is the art of letting go. I suspect most of us find this much harder to do, but life provides us with no fewer occasions to practice it. Think, for instance, of the times in your family when you have to accept that your "little girl" is no longer little and seems intent on asserting her independence. Think of the time your son leaves for college for the first time, and you see him leave with others who will enjoy his presence much more often than you over the coming months. Think of your child's wedding, when you seem more fearful of the risks than your son or daughter even imagines! The comedy Father of the Bride is a true-to-life experience of many parents of maturing children. Not to be forgotten, of course, is the very deep letting go that is having a family member die. In all of these situations and more, life teaches us the discipline of letting go. Lest we ever think otherwise, they are also expressions of the very love that family is all about. We not only hold our family close; life teaches us also to let go of them, in love.

Let me conclude with the words of blessing for fathers found in the ritual of the baptism of an infant. God is the giver of all life, human and divine. May God bless you, the father of this child. You and your wife will be the first teachers of your child in the ways of faith. May you be also the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what you say and do, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.