Reflections on Fatherhood:  What is fatherhood? I think many people nowadays might just say that fatherhood is nothing more than the name we give to parenting when it is done by a male.  But, while the simplicity of this answer might be appealing, our faith reveals to us for certain that it is so much more.
 Fatherhood permeates both the Old and the New Testament as a central aspect of God’s plan (e.g. Gen 17:5, 1 Cor 4:15). But even more important than the human fatherhood we see in the scriptures is the revelation of God himself as Father in the first person of the Trinity.
If fatherhood is so fundamental to reality, it’s something worthy of deep refection.  In fact, this is why God included it in his creation – so that we might come to understand something of his fatherhood.
My own reflections on this have led me to believe that one of the most important aspects of fatherhood is the idea of “bestowal.”  To bestow means more than just to give to another. It means to give from what I have within me.  For example, I personally might be able to hand you a college diploma, but I can’t bestow one upon you because I don’t have the authority within me to do that – only the president of the college does (or at least his/her appointed representative).
Fathers, first and foremost, bestow life upon their children (with the help of the mother, of course), but since life is about more than just being born, it doesn’t end there.  Fathers have a special role in bestowing upon their children what they need to face the challenges of life.  Think about it this way.  Mothers have a special gift and role in nurturing their children. This starts in the womb and continues especially through infancy.  To nurture (I would argue) means to shelter, to heal, and to assist in the growth of what is already present.  While this is critically important, as human beings, being nurtured alone isn’t enough because there are some things we don’t have within us to begin with, and therefore can’t be nurtured. There are some things we need to be given to us from the outside.
Imagine being a kid, for example, and you are asked to do something that just seems too much for you.  Say, you have been assigned a lead role in the school’s Christmas play even though you have stage-fright.  When show-time arrives, you might feel like you don’t have the courage to follow through with it; indeed, you might even be right.  But now imagine having a father who is himself a good and courageous man and, in that moment, he says to you, “I believe in you. I know it’s hard, but I know you can do it. You are strong. I see it in you.”  Who wouldn’t be filled with new courage at these words of such a father?  Though you might not have had the courage before, you do now because, by these words, he has just placed it in you.
This is especially the gift and role of fathers.  They place their strength in us when we don’t have it in ourselves.
Sadly, this is why fathers can also cause such great wounds.  Think about what happens to the heart of someone who needs their father’s strength, but he isn’t around to give it.  Or worse, think about the father who does the opposite of what fathers are supposed to do – instead of bestowing his strength on the weak, he uses his strength to hurt the weak.
Fortunately for us, whether or not we’ve be blessed with a good earthly father, we all have a good heavenly Father – the “father of the fatherless” as psalms 68 says. 
Perhaps the most revealing passage in all of scripture about what our heavenly Father is like is the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15). In this story, the father was so eager to receive back his wayward son that he ran out to meet him before he even arrived at the doorstep.  He then put on him his best robe, ring, and sandals, symbolizing the bestowal of sonship upon him again, even though he had once rejected it.
May God the Father bestow on all fathers the willingness to empty themselves so that others may be full.
-Fr. Sandquist