Happy Father’s Day!
Happy Father’s Day!
In honor of Father’s Day, I would like to show off this picture of Baby Jesus playing with St. Joseph’s beard!
Watching my husband transform into a father has been one of the strangest things that I’ve gotten a chance to watch! What can I say? Fatherhood is so full of contradictions!
Here he is, this strong, capable man… and yet, he is so gentle with our children.
And yet! he can play rowdy with them and throw them in the air and spin them around… and yet, nobody gets hurt and everybody has a great time.
With very few words, he can make the children quake in their boots and yet… he rarely has to do anything after saying those few words.
He leaves home for much of the day and so the children don’t get to spend much time with him, all things considering. And yet, when they do, they love every moment of it and recount their activities with their father with much happiness.
See what I mean?
And that’s one reason why I love this artwork so much. Here is St. Joseph, holding Baby Jesus. He is a hard-working carpenter and probably extremely strong. A very manly man, one might say! And yet, what is he doing? Letting Baby Jesus scruffle his beard and he watches on with tenderness, while Mary rides on a donkey in the background.
Anyway, if you’re a father, then I wish you a very happy father’s day! Fatherhood is a strange and exciting vocation full of its ups and downs. And it can be tough… really tough. Yet, it is a beautiful journey as well.
May God the Father bless you through this journey! I will be praying for all of you today.
