Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

The Father

 
Introduction | The Role of a Mother | The Role of a Father | Lack | Saint Joseph | The Remedy | Prayer to Saint Joseph | Modern Prayer to Saint Joseph
 

 
Persons who lack a deep understanding of the Christian Faith will often claim that the Blessed Virgin Mary is just a goddess substitute taken over from pagan religions. Yet the Blessed Virgin is far from being a goddess. As the mother of our Lord, and therefore the most blessed of all saints, Mary receives our greatest reverence and respect (called hyperdulia in technical language). Still, despite all this reverence from the Church, the Blessed Virgin never was taken to be comparable to a pagan goddess. Pagan goddesses kept their sons to themselves, to serve the recurring cycle of natural fertility. Christianity, however, is something completely different from a slavery to the closed, repetitious cycle of birth and death.

To save the world from its slavery to death and sin, God chose to come into the world in human form, so as to show us exactly how to live holy lives. To do this, He submitted Himself to the very rules of life that He created. Thus He was born of a woman, as every human infant must be born. And he provided for Himself a father, Saint Joseph.

Why a father?

Think about this a bit. The angel told Mary, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). Now, if we think of a father in just the biological sense, as a sort of “sperm donor,” Saint Joseph wasn’t really needed, was he? God did the work Himself, right?

Well, there’s more to being a father than just performing a biological function. Despite what contemporary culture might believe about single mothers and homosexual “parents,” God knows the truth. He should. He created it. And the Catholic Church knows too. And Saint Joseph exemplifies it all.

 
The Role of a Mother

We all need mothers—just as almost every animal in this world needs a mother. A mother’s role is to nurture a child so that the child can develop strength and inner security through emotional honesty.

The Blessed Virgin did this perfectly for the child Jesus. The Bible witnesses to it: “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed,” we hear from Luke 11:27.

And look at the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. At the sight of the Cross, the child Jesus leaps into His mother’s arms, one sandal dangling from His foot as testimony to His haste in seeking out His mother’s protection. And notice this well: a mother’s protection, until the time is ripe for the real Cross. Thus a mother must be a solid core of faith in the family so as to teach her children how to pray, to prepare them for the journey to the cross.

And here we come to the role of a father.

 
The Role of a Father

A father must “come between” a mother and her child to sever the child’s bond of dependence on the mother and to lead the child out into the world so that the child can develop his or her talents and take up a meaningful, productive life of honesty and integrity.

All of us have experienced the delight of being fed and protected when we were helpless infants. In fact, if we don’t experience it, we die. And the delight of this early infantile experience, which makes no demands on us and leaves us free simply to enjoy it, is at the root of our adult yearnings for a “utopia” in which all of our needs are taken care of effortlessly. But to function responsibly as an adult, a child must pass beyond this care-free infantile state of dependence. If this task fails, the child will remain neurotically dependent on maternal protection and will be afflicted with doubts and anxieties about assuming personal responsibility in the world. Moreover, the child’s talents will either remain buried in fear or will be expressed largely through an unconscious grandiosity. And, in its most severe manifestations, alcoholism and drug addictions can develop in adolescence and adulthood, because all addictions have their roots in a desire to escape the demands of personal responsibilities and return to an idyllic feeling of care-free bliss.

A child, therefore, has three essential tasks which must be accomplished under the guidance of a father.

 
1. To learn how the world works.

The father must teach the child not only about the abstract—and often dangerous—dynamics of social relationships beyond the family itself but must also provide instruction in the practical rules governing the physical world, including honest, productive work in the world.

Imagine a primitive society of forest dwellers. To teach the child how the world “works,” the father must take the child out into the depths of the forest and show the child how to survive and eat by using weapons, building fires, and making shelters. Now, the modern world may not be a forest anymore—though it is often enough called a jungle—yet the forest metaphor aptly describes the process by which a father must teach a child “how the world works.”

 
2. To learn to trust.

Yes, a child will more-or-less “trust” a nurturing mother. This sort of trust, though, is a necessary part of mother-infant bonding for the sake of the infant’s physical survival.

Real trust requires that the child grow to depend on and respect the father, a person different from the mother from whom the child originated; that is, the father is a different body and a different gender from the mother. The father—and only a father—can therefore teach the child to enter the world and encounter difference confidently. But, to be a successful teacher, the father must teach this from the place of his own faith and obedience. In other words, the father must live from his heart by the rules he teaches to his children. In this way the children can learn to trust him through his own integrity. Otherwise, the children will see him for a hypocrite and will disavow—openly or secretly—everything he represents.

 
3. To learn to trust oneself.

As a child receives instruction from a trustworthy father and develops a sense of confidence under the father’s compassionate guidance, the child will then be able to function more and more independently, assimilating the father’s external guidance into an internal, psychological confidence.

First the father builds a fire, saying to the child, “Watch me.” Then the father encourages the child to build the fire. Finally the child goes off into the forest alone, and builds a fire on his own, confident in what he learned from his father.

 
Lack

Now, considering all of this about the role of a father, look about you and see how many fathers fail miserably in their responsibilities. How many fathers are absent from the family because they were nothing more than sperm donors in a moment of lust? How many fathers are absent from the family because of divorce? How many fathers are absent from the family because their adultery draws them away to another woman? How many fathers are absent from the family because they are emotionally insensitive to their children’s needs? How many fathers are absent from the family because they are preoccupied with work or sports? How many fathers are absent from the family because they are preoccupied with their own pride and arrogance? How many fathers are absent from the family because of alcoholism? How many fathers are absent from the family because of illness? How many fathers are absent from the family because a woman decided she didn’t need a man to have a child? It can go on and on. And it does.

And the sad thing is that when a father is absent—whether physically or emotionally—his lack causes a lack in the children. Lacking understanding of how the world works, lacking trust in others, and lacking trust in themselves, children—whether they be boys or girls—become lost, insecure, and confused. They lack confidence. They lack real faith. They lack a spiritually meaningful future. They lack life. All because their fathers were lacking. 

Please note, though, that all of this lack resulting from the lack of a father is, in many cases, largely unconscious. Yes, some persons are truly crippled—both emotionally and socially—by the lack of a father, and their lives become dysfunctional and stuck. And, sadly, some die in childhood from abuse at the hands of the mother’s “partner.” [1] But other persons are able to keep up a surface appearance of functionality; they hold jobs, they get married, and they have children. And they may even be active in their churches. Yet under the surface of normality—and often under the surface of devotions and novenas—a deep secret of anger and victimization is buried. Here are the dark roots of symptom after symptom of secret resentment for the father. Argumentativeness. Passive-aggression. Suspiciousness. Trying to make others “face the truth.” Being late for appointments. Procrastination. Self-hatred and self-punishment. Difficulty following directions or reading maps. Getting lost. Mental confusion at just the times when clarity of thought is needed. Weight gain. Cigarette smoking. A fascination with pornography. This list, too, goes on and on. Now, the irony here is that although all of these self-defeating behaviors are based in anger at the father and are unconsciously motivated to “get back at” the father, they can ultimately lead a person into religious disobedience and willful sin. Why? Because in the unconscious our separation from God the Father (resulting from our Original Sin) becomes confused with the lack of an actual father. Anger at God, though, gets us nowhere—at least, nowhere pleasant. And so unconscious anger ultimately hurts only ourselves. Without intense scrutiny, the dark roots of these self-defeating behaviors remain outside of conscious awareness. Yet when individuals examine their private inner lives in psychotherapy or spiritual direction, and the deep truth of their hidden despair emerges, they end up admitting that they have been secretly hating themselves all along and that their lives have failed to bear much—if any—spiritual fruit.

 
Saint Joseph

In contrast to all the lack in many families, Saint Joseph exemplifies a father’s presence as a teacher, a trustworthy man of faith, and a man whose faith inspires others to grow in confidence and wisdom.

Saint Joseph was a carpenter who taught Jesus the craft; thus, he taught Jesus how to work in the world. And we know that Jesus learned from him, because Jesus was obedient to him (Luke 2:51).

We also know that Saint Joseph was a righteous man (Matthew 1:19). He was also a man of faith because when an angel gave him instructions in a dream, Saint Joseph obeyed without question—twice (Matthew 2:13-15; Matthew 2:19-23).

Finally, we know that Jesus grew in self-confidence under Saint Joseph’s guidance: the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom (Luke 2:40; see also Luke 2:52). Thus Saint Joseph’s role as father was to prepare Jesus to serve His heavenly Father. And this is all foreshadowed by the story of The Boy Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52), when, at the age of maturity, Jesus declares to Mary, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” This event represents the symbolic separation of the child from the mother by the father. Thus, to achieve this separation, Saint Joseph served as father until Jesus was prepared Himself to serve the Father.

 
The Remedy

So what can you do if your own father’s lack has left you lacking? What can you do if, despite your best attempts on your own, you still feel doubtful, insecure, fearful, and interiorly embarrassed for not living a holy life?

Well, regardless of the lack of your own father, you can be led through Christ to the utter fullness of life in God the Father. To do this, though, you must set aside your unconscious anger at your father and take full personal responsibility to remedy what is lacking in you.

“But wait,” you say, “I have no issues with my father. We got along well together. My mother was the cruel one.” In that case, don’t be deceived by sentimentality. Yes, you have to resolve a lot of anger at your mother—and, in addition to that, you will find considerable unconscious anger at your father: for being too physically ill, too mentally ill, or just too weak or cowardly to stop your mother’s abuse.

Therefore, acknowledge what was “stolen” from you as a child; feel the pain of that loss and bring it all to Christ; and, refusing to hate your father, turn to Christ in full confidence to teach you what you never learned as a child.

He will teach you through inner spiritual guidance, through spiritual directors, through encounters with your own unconscious conflicts, and, above all, through tribulations and trials.

So die to yourself and joyfully allow Christ to lead you to your heavenly Father.

	Purge out the old leaven of corruption, then you will be bread of a new baking.
	—1 Corinthians 5:7

To do this, you must really die to yourself. Sever all of your vain attachments to the world and all of your illusory social identifications that only hide your inner insecurity and wretchedness. Take up the task of inner scrutiny through true spiritual purgation.

None of this is easy. It doesn’t happen just by thinking about it. It requires mental and physical discipline. It takes hard work. It takes courage. And, if your father was lacking, then you lack courage, don’t you? Therefore, the only way to learn to trust in God is to strip away everything we use to hide from Him so that, left with nothing of our own making—with no arrogance, no pride, no hatred, and no bitterness for what others have done to us—we have no choice but to acknowledge our wounds, feel the pain, bring it all to Christ, and depend on Him alone.

In all of this, keep in mind two natural models. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, in all of her titles, represents the Church, the mother who nurtures our souls with her Sacraments during our life-long journey to our true Father. Saint Joseph represents all priests of the Church, not in their priestly role per se (that is, as representatives of Christ) but as symbolic fathers who lead us beyond themselves to serve our true Father.

And what about Christ? Well, Christ has no natural model. In some ways, yes, we are all like Him as a child, who grew in wisdom through obedience to His parents. So we must grow in holiness through obedience. But, in His ability to heal our brokenness through the broken bread of the Eucharist—His body and blood, faith and love—He has no natural parallel. No other religion has a God like this, who came into this world in human form to save us from our sin, who loved us despite our lack of love, who endured all of our hatred without hating us, and who offers us His unfathomable mercy if only we would turn away from what we think we are and turn back to what He really is—and what we can be in Him: God’s children with a real Father.

	Christ is in the Father by reason of His divine nature, we are in Him by reason of His human birth, and He is in us through the mystery of the sacraments.
	—from a treatise by Saint Hilary, bishop Office of Readings, Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

 
Traditional Prayer to Saint Joseph

In 1889, in Quamquam pluries, Pope Leo XIII prescribed that this prayer to St. Joseph be added to the recitation of the Rosary during the month of October. Nothing prevents this prayer from being used by the faithful at any other time.
 

TO thee, O blessed Joseph, do we have recourse in our tribulation, and having implored the help of thy thrice-holy Spouse, we confidently invoke thy patronage also. By that charity wherewith thou wast united to the immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and by that fatherly affection with which thou didst embrace the Child Jesus, we beseech thee and we humbly pray, that thou wouldst look graciously upon the inheritance which Jesus Christ hath purchased by His Blood, and assist us in our needs by thy power and strength.
 
Most watchful Guardian of the Holy Family, protect the chosen people of Jesus Christ; keep far from us, most loving father, all blight of error and corruption; mercifully assist us from heaven, most mighty defender, in this our conflict with the powers of darkness; and, even as of old thou didst rescue the Child Jesus from the supreme peril of His life, so now defend God’s Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; keep us one and all under thy continual protection, that we may be supported by thine example and thine assistance, may be enabled to lead a holy life, die a happy death, and come at last to the possession of everlasting blessedness in heaven. Amen.

 
Modern Prayer to Saint Joseph

 

Download a printable version of this prayer

 
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1. Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93.

“Young children who reside in households with unrelated adults are at exceptionally high risk for inflicted-injury death. Most perpetrators are male, and most are residents of the decedent child’s household at the time of injury.”