This is the God we share with all devout and faithful people everywhere, the unfathomable abyss of life, which we fear is remote, which we long to discover is our root and home. This is the One Jesus called Father, giving us a name for the Eternal Source. Today is also, of course, Father's Day. Motherhood is known from the inside, that is, by being carried and by carrying directly, and it forms in our life an almost subliminal substratum. Fathers must bring themselves to be believed in and believe in themselves in ways that mothers are beyond.
Fatherhood is, sometimes in subtle ways, a request and an assertion.
To become a Father, perhaps at the moment of conception, but certainly through a child's years of formation, a man must call another person into relationship. This psychological relationship needs to be elicited with a certain respect and caution. It must be summoned, almost conjured, into existence. All the affectionate and protective and boundary-making gestures and words that fathers use are together the incantation that makes the relationship. The fifth stanza of St. Patrick's Breastplate takes up precisely this business and names some activities that are shared by all parents.