Catholic Fatherhood: Time Management and Responsibilities

Justin Haggerty | The Daily Knight

Inspired by Pope Francis' declaration of 2021 as the 'Year of St. Joseph,' The Daily Knight will produce weekly articles to share and clarify the vocation of 'Catholic Fatherhood.' Our mission, at the Sacred Military Order of Knights of the Republic and the Most Victorious Heart of Jesus, is to defeat modernism, the synthesis of all heresies, in the domestic church (the family), the parish, and society at large. Building your domestic church is the quintessential foundation for fostering the faith and rebuilding Christendom.

Prayer to St. Joseph by Pope Leo XIII:

To thee, O blessed Joseph, do we come in our tribulation, and having implored the help of thy most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke thy patronage also. Through that charity which bound thee to the immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the paternal love with which thou embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg thee to graciously regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by his Blood, and with thy power and strength to aid us in our necessities.

O most watchful Guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; O most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; O our most mighty protector, be propitious to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with the power of darkness; and, as once thou rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God's Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; shield, too, each one of us by thy constant protection, so that, supported by thy example and thy aid, we may be able to live piously, to die holy, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven. Amen.

~ From the Raccolta #476 & Enchridion #6.

Time Management and Responsibilities

All fathers have the primary responsibility to provide from one's family through toil and remuneration, unless you are self-sustained farmer. Remuneration is to labor for a wage, in order to possess the capital means to purchase food stuffs and goods of necessity, assets and equipment, livestock and additional labor (if required), luxuries and education, means of protection in leisure, debts and charities, and land and property. Through an honest labor and a fair wage, the before mentioned variables can be procured to help provide a healthy, comfortable, and productive life for a wife and children

This discussion is ultimately about temporal provision and not the fatherly duty to tend to the spiritual needs of the family, which would be an entirely separate article.

While it is the father's responsibility to toil in support of the family, because of the fallen nature merited by Adam in the garden, there are limits that rightfully informed the father of a 'job well done' and when its time to wrap things up at the office and head home. Our duty, as fathers, is to provide and not replace the marriage to your wife with a marriage with work and replace the fatherhood of your children with the fatherhood of employees and accomplishes at work. We have all known or at least heard stories of fathers who treated their business or professional career in a way that robbed precious time an intimate investment from the family unit. The father who can never make a ball game or school play, or leave his wife dealing with the children, along through dinner, until eight or nine-o'clock at night.

If one's financial situation or wage requires such toil and sacrifice, that is a different story. Nevertheless, for the health of the family, the father should strive to improve the situation by better employment or reduce costs. Life, in this pilgrimage through the world, is short and each minute that goes by no one is getting back. Memories, especially for the children, are the most valuable thing that a father can provide. Not being there, because work is more important, only drives a wedge between relationships and a knife into every ounce of love and admiration, that child could have for a father. The rift can become so strong as to cause separation and divorce between spouses and resentment and distance with children.

time management, for all fathers, is highly important in order to establish a healthy and productive work-home life balance. It is on you to produce that schedule and to adhere to it. As our blessed Lord said, "no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will sustain the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6: 24-25). Jesus Christ is teaching about the conflict of one serving God or the world (or the needs of the world as represented in money), and how the dichotomy, as both are in direct opposition, could never allow a person to serve both ultimately driving the individual to hold reservations against or even hate God. The same can be applied to a family, as the social representation of the Holy Family, an its conflict with labor and money. The latter, represented by ‘mammon’, has driven many fathers and mothers to resent their families because of false own selfish notions that they interrupted hand hindered their professional careers.

In the same passage in the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus Christ continues to teach that, without neglecting one's duty like the ‘unjust servant’ (Luke 16:1-9) and the ‘wicked servant’ (Matthew 18:23-35), we should not toil with a man-centered expectation that we alone can provide for the health, sustenance, and protection of our families. For the Lord said: "Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat, and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air; for they neither so nor do they rape, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they? And which of you, by taken thought, can add to his stature one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they labor not, neither do they spin: but I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. Now if God so close the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more you, O ye of little faith! Be not solicitous therefore saying: what shall we eat, for what shall we drink, or wear with shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and his justice; And all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:26-33)

the Lord, via the multiplication of the loaves and fish, fed tens of thousands of men, women and children. The apostles and countless disciples bore witness to such divine miracles, and the Lord, for nearly two thousands years, has distributed spiritual food of His body and blood, truly present in the most Holy Eucharist, to billions of His faithful from every alter and Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass around the world. He, our Divine Savior, can fulfill all needs of the family.

I would like to leave you with a couple prayers to offer your daily labor:

Prayer before any work (Veni Sancte Spiritus)

“Come, Holy Ghost, filled the hearts of the faithful and kindled in them the fire of that love.

V: send forth by spirit, and I shall be created.

R: and now shall renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray- oh God, who has taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Ghost, grant that by the gift of the same spirit we may be always truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Prayer after any work (Sub Tuum Praesidium)

“We fly to the patronage, oh holy mother of God: despise not our petitions and our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, oh ever glorious and blessed virgin!

May the divine assistance remain always with us this! Amen.”

In Christ crucified and the most victorious heart of Jesus

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