St. John Paul II believed fathers were vital to the success of every family, and laid out his “guide” for fathers in his encyclical Familiaris Consortio.
Being a father isn’t always easy, but with God’s help, all things are possible.
1Love your wife and children
Love for his wife as mother of their children and love for the children themselves are for the man the natural way of understanding and fulfilling his own fatherhood. Above all where social and cultural conditions so easily encourage a father to be less concerned with his family or at any rate less involved in the work of education, efforts must be made to restore socially the conviction that the place and task of the father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance.
2Take an active role in the education of your children
In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God, a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family: he will perform this task by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother, by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife
3Don’t be an absent father
As experience teaches, the absence of a father causes psychological and moral imbalance and notable difficulties in family relationships.
4Be a source of unity, not division
[N]ever a cause of division in the family, but promotes its unity and stability.
5Be a strong Christian witness
[B]y means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church.
And today we celebrate...