A Message from Father Nathan

My dearest people who are all close to my heart!

Lots of love, blessings, and prayers to you all.

Happy Father’s Day

“These commandments that I give today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and get up.” – Deuteronomy 6:6-7

This passage comes just after Moses shared the Ten Commandments with Israel, but for Christian fathers, the heart of this verse is that God’s Word should be on our minds throughout our day, and we have a responsibility to teach our children what God desires.

Father’s Day is an opportunity to tell our Dads how much we appreciate them. New dads, experienced dads, granddads, dads-in-law, stepdads, like all dads…these fathers play a role in shaping how our children see the world and understand right and wrong.

As kids mature into adults, they make their own choices about what to do with their lives, how to treat others, and how to understand their relationship with God. Dads get to help lay the foundation for those decisions.

What makes a good Father?

The qualities of a good father include:

• Spend time actively involved with your kids
• Modeling the behavior you expect
• Taking ownership when you make mistakes
• Training your children to be better people
• Treating their mother with dignity
• Be a good listener
• Understanding that our kids may have different opinions…
• Teach them respect for differing opinions
• …the list is unending.

One of the greatest qualities of Dad is and should be the fact that he needs to be an inspiration or a model to the family.

Today, unfortunately, we lack this in our society.

Today is the day when we thank all our Dads for what they are and were to us. What we are today is just because of them, because of their love, and because of the sacrifice, they have done for us.

This too, we share with our spiritual fathers – the priests in our lives that also have impacted all of us!

May God bless them. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and fathers out there.

God bless you all.

With lots of love and blessing.

Ever at your service.

—Fr. Sahayanathan Nathan