A Father is Present

I’m not a pop-culture man (to put it mildly). But a speech by actress Blake Lively about her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, grabbed my attention, for all the right reasons.

“I am his home, and his girls are his home,” Lively said about Reynolds during a moving tribute to him last fall. She referenced an incident from Reynolds’ youth, when he was 19, he was hit by a truck as he was eagerly walking to get home. Lively shared, “and just like that 19-year-old boy, he races home. Whether it’s from across the globe, or a meeting across the street, he is hard-wired to get home.”

“Daddy always comes home,” Lively concluded of her husband Reynolds. “He is the most present person you will ever meet…And yes, he does create magic in his work. But man, oh man, does he create magic in his real life.”

These are beautiful words. As the person who posted the video of Lively on Twitter said: “Men, if your wife doesn’t talk about you like @blakelively talks about [Reynolds]… you have work to do.”

In recent decades, enormous quantities of ink have been spilled on the so-called “crisis of masculinity” and the attendant “crisis of fatherhood.” And not without reason.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2020 an astounding 15.3 million children in our country were living with without a father in the home. At 21 percent, this is a huge increase from 1968, when only 11percent of children lived at home with no father present.

Given the enormous body of research tying fatherlessness to increased risks of poverty, substance abuse, poor academic performance, and criminal behavior, this situation is rightly called a “crisis.”

One additional—and tragic—consequence of fatherlessness, is that it produces a repetitive cycle. Young men who grow up without a father often don’t know what fatherhood might even look like. When they in turn become fathers, they find themselves overwhelmed and confused about what is expected of them.

Too often, like their own fathers did, they simply check out.

As a Catholic priest, I look to the Scriptures for inspiration. The biblical authors often refer to God as “Father.” However, what strikes me, is the reason they often give for why God should be called “Father,” i.e., the closeness of His presence to us.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?” Jesus says in Matthew 10:29. “Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Certainly, the most beautiful depiction of God as Father in all of Scripture is found in the parable of the prodigal son.

The wayward son has done everything wrong. He wastes his inheritance on partying and prostitutes. And what, in the end, does his father do for him? He races to greet him, to enfold him in a loving embrace. That is, he is there for him.

Pope St. John Paul II once described this depiction of God as Father the “definitive icon of God revealed by Christ.” He said, “It is God the Father who extends his arms in blessing and forgiveness, always waiting, never forcing any of his children.”

In the face of a problem as complex as fatherlessness, it can be easy to overcomplicate things. Certainly, the often-contentious debate about what “real” manhood or fatherhood looks like can be utterly bewildering. But for men who simply want to be good fathers, this can be a trap, producing unnecessary confusion and anxiety.

What I love about Lively’s remarks about Reynolds is how she zeroed in on the one, simple thing that all the research has identified as being the most important thing fathers can give to their children: their presence.

Truly, fatherhood begins and ends with presence.

Not just physical presence (although research has shown that even that, alone, can be powerfully positive), but a presence of attention: the loving attention of a father who “races home” at the end of the day to be with his wife and children. This is an attention modeled on the loving attention of God the Father.

I am privileged to have known many good fathers, including my own. And this is the thing that unites them all: they resist all the forces tempting them to place their attention, and to seek their identity, in something outside the home. Instead, the home is the gravitational center, around which everything they do revolves. They love to be home. They love to be with their wife and children.

Presence like this can make up for myriad of personal shortcomings and can outweigh a plethora of mistakes. So, fathers, this Father’s Day, why not give your children the thing they need the most: your presence. Like Reynolds, aspire to be the sort of man about whom your wife and children can admiringly say, “Daddy always comes home.”