God's Purpose For the FamilySample

God is our Father, “from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,” as Saint Paul says. God is the author of nature, and of our human nature, fallen though it may be through the sin of Adam. It makes no sense to think that we could ever understand the fatherhood of God without human fatherhood as its derivative and its image. Just as we cease to think of God as Creator, losing a strong sense of the ordered goodness of creation, the more we ensconce ourselves in plastic and in the contra-natural habits of the sexual revolution, so the Father fades from our vision as patriarchy among us fades. The piety that God demands of us when He says, “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exod. 20:12, KJV) is at one with the piety of the first commandment of all: “I am the Lord thy God . . . thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2–3, KJV).

“Honour thy father and mother,” says Saint Paul, is “the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2–3, KJV). That is fitting. I am here and I am who I am because my father and mother, and their parents before them, made promises to one another. Promises which they kept for one another and for their children. And I in turn have made the same promise to my wife, and that promise is made manifest in our own children and the care we have given to them. Man is not a flea in time. He dwells in a history, even that which goes back to Adam and extends to the end of time itself and its consummation in the heavenly Jerusalem. Man dwells also in a place, a nation, and owes a debt of gratitude to all who came before him to give him what he, as an individual, can never repay. We are born the receivers of gifts: we are in debt from the start. Every breath we take is lent to us, and gratitude, pious gratitude, is the creature’s share in the free abundance of the Creator.

-Anthony Esolen