You're just like your Father

This Wednesday I am reflecting on the fourth of the ten commandments, which is:

“Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”

From the book of Exodus, chapter twenty.

In the second chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel there is an unusual account of Jesus as a young man. We know about His birth because it is well documented and His life from the age of thirty but there is only one story about Jesus as a 12/13 year old boy in the Bible and I would encourage everybody to read it. It ends with the words:

“…and he was obedient to them” which refers to Jesus obeying His parents- St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary.

This is the first commandment which relates directly to our love of other people. The first three help us love and respect God, and the next seven commandments help us to love and respect others.

A few years ago, I watched the film “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” for the first time in years. I loved old films as a teenager but haven’t watched TV or films much as an adult.

There is an early scene where Mr. Smith himself is bashfully (*bashful is a far superior adjective to shy, let’s steal it from the Americans please) being flattered by a Senator who was a friend of Smith’s recently deceased Father. The Senator says the phrase “You’re just like your Father” to Smith and to my absolute astonishment, bashful Smith responds: “Thank you, Sir”.

What on earth.

Recent photograph of my poor Mother with some awful old cat

Recent photograph of my unfortunate Father and rabbit companions

I grew up hearing “You’re just like your Father” from Mum and “You’re just like your Mother” from Dad. In neither instance would I have said “Thank you” and if I had, it would have been grossly inappropriate, so probably would have raised an eyebrow from the offending Parent.

Child with penchant for cycling and rainbow specs, clearly nothing like them

To be clear, my parents don’t have habits of putting each other down, even though they separated when I was six, so this was not said in disgust or serious dislike.

At best, my own Parents might say “You’re just like your…” with a kind of affectionate despair, a furrowed brow and slow headshake to accompany it. With a kind of fondness for the creature, even if it is awful like some other awful creature they love.

What do you mean I'm just like my Father?

What is clear though, is my parents didn’t mean it in the way the Senator said it to the wide-eyed, naive Smith. The way my Parents said this expression suggested I inherited some of the other parent’s bad habits- because I obviously didn’t get it from them.

Were you talking to that guy?

We do pick up bad habits from our parents, parent-like figures and anybody we admire- because if we like someone we often want to emulate the things we like about them.

With our parents though we are usually like them without trying to be. We are created by our parents and inevitably like them. We call God Our Father in the Christian faith and parents are like God in the sense that they create life- they bring a human person with a body and soul into the world when they have a child.

It is not a throw away relationship which means nothing if it is difficult, because you can just adopt another parent, but there are surrogate parents in the world who do a better job than birth parents. It is necessary sometimes that we have role models who are not our birth parents.

Jesus Himself had a surrogate Parent in St. Joseph, because He was conceived in the Virgin Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit and had no human Father. St. Joseph was already engaged to Mary and chose to stay with her to help her raise Jesus as his own son.

I pray to St. Joseph every day- he is one of three Saints I pray to every morning along with St. Patrick and St. Anthony of Padua. I describe Joseph the first of my fathers in the faith because he is the first Patron after the Virgin who I go to, I call him Papa or Joseph.

Or that guy?

Being “Just like my Father” as in my unfortunate, earthly Father is not the end of the world. Some ways I resemble him are good and some ways I resemble him are bad. He could have kept the perfectly square feet, for example.

As a Christian convert my new life takes me far away from how I was raised. My Father is an unbaptised antitheist, so although my parents are good people who I rightly love and respect I cannot be like them completely because it would be impossible for me to follow my parents example and follow Jesus.

St. Joseph says nothing in the Bible, and we don’t have any direct teaching from him because he wrote nothing down that we know of. Yet I speak to him every day in prayer and He speaks to God the Father for me. So, Joseph is helping me primarily through my relationship with him. Like when a young child goes to their Parents for help, so my infantile nickname of Papa is perfect for him because he is helping me like a parent helps a young child.

Mary is our Mother in Heaven too. When Jesus is dying on the cross, he says to St. John, who is standing by the cross with Mary, that John and Mary should look after each other. He calls John Mary’s son, and Mary John’s Mother. The tradition teaches that John is all of us, he is symbolic of all people and we are all supposed to treat Mary like a Mum.

Every day we look at Jesus and try to be like Him. In Luke’s Gospel it says “He went down with his parents and was obedient…” First he went to his parents, then listened to them and did as they asked because of his love and trust for them. God the Father trusted these two remarkable people with the care of Jesus, His son.

My view is that as Jesus Himself went first to Mary and Joseph, so should we.
As we make them our spiritual parents, we will become like them through our relationship with them. Jesus would have been like His parents too- He looked like his Mother Mary, He did the trade His Father taught him.

Yet before Jesus started preaching at thirty Joseph had already died, and Mary couldn’t stop him dying on the cross. She had to stand by and watch her son suffer, and He had to watch her suffering with Him, knowing how much that hurt her.

They were human with limitations, and invaluable to Jesus. He would not have had the life He did without them. They had a place in time and space, like all of us, and they did well to look after Him.

When Jesus died, he released souls who had died before Him, like Joseph, and Heaven was opened for everybody. We can know that many people who have died are already with God because of answered prayers and miracles that prove this. This teaching is why Catholics pray to Saints.

We can rely on praying to God the Father when everyone and everything in the world seems to let us down, we can always turn to Him. We are not alone with God, even if His presence is not obvious to us.

Oh come on, you must be thinking of my ugly brother?

We can be bold when we approach God and know that He cares about us and hears us. He is not without humans in Heaven now that Jesus has unlocked it, and the people in Heaven can hear us and help us to pray. They are still able to pray for us, just as Christians pray for each other in this life and they want to pray for us.

I go to the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph first in all my needs when I ask for help in prayer because I know that's what Jesus wants me to do. I am honouring His parents when I do so and becoming more like the Heavenly Father whose image we are all made in.

Though I don’t really mind being like my creature parents (I promise) it’s not fair that I get the gift of faith, hope and love from God when they are stuck in uncertainty in the world.

Would the reader help to rectify this injustice and pray for my poor Mother and “come to Papa” (pray to Joseph) for my unfortunate Father? Can you imagine they've put up with me for thirty years and still love me? Yes, they need your prayers.

Please come to the Holy Family with me. If they help me with everything, they will help you too!

I found a couple of prayer cards. If I'm really just like my Father, this might be my only hope.