Since our Lord Jesus Christ proposed His Eternal Father as our archetype and standard because all life, all goodness, all holiness comes to us from Him, the priest can look to Him as the role model par excellence: “Be perfect therefore as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt.5:48).
God the Father is the supreme model of fatherhood. He is the father par excellence in his peerless goodness, nobility, generosity, mercy, self-giving. “He who has seen me”, said Jesus, “has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9) because “I am in the Father and the Father [is] in me” (Jn 14:11). Therefore when we seek to act as supernatural and spiritual fathers we simply follow the example of Christ for “in him we see our God made visible and are caught up in the love of the God we cannot see” (Pope Leo the Great).
Our Lord Jesus reveals to us the Father’s sublime goodness (“He who did not spare His own son but gave him up for us all”(Rom 8:32). He portrays the compassion of the Father in the image of himself as the Good Shepherd: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”(Mt.9:36). A shepherd with limitless love: “I lay down my life for my sheep.” ( Jn 10:15).
Indeed, it was in this context that the supreme Shepherd prayed for priest-shepherds who would prolong his mission: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Mt.9:37-38). By contemplating the life of Christ in the Gospel the Ignatian matures in fatherhood as, gradually his soul is sealed with the likeness of the most perfect man and the most perfect father who ever walked the roads of Earth.
An unsurpassable ideal! He who “did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us” (Rom 8:32) is the model for the magnanimity that souls must see reflected in the priest. The Creator who “fathers-forth whose beauty is past change” (G. M. Hopkins) is the inspiration and model for the priest’s activity.
Nor is it an ideal that crushes the Ignatian because it is unattainable. Within the limitations of creaturehood, he is capable of acquiring a resemblance to his Heavenly Father by becoming more like the Son of the Eternal Father since he has the life of the Blessed Trinity pulsating within him in sanctifying grace.
Through mental prayer he connects with his Eternal Father. This prayer in turn opens the valves in his soul to the supernatural life so that He from whom flows all fatherhood in Heaven and on earth may shape him into a true vir Dei with all the virtues of a father.
In an interview with the Catholic author, Anthony Esolen, the interviewer posed the following question: What could men learn about developing masculinity from Christ?
“The first thing they could learn is not to be embarrassed by their manhood. It is holy! It has been created by God, and for a reason. Then they might notice that … Jesus loves women, as all good men must; Jesus obeys his mother at Cana; but Jesus does not hang around the skirts of women; he speaks gently, but as a man speaks gently, and when he rebukes, he rebukes forthrightly and clearly, as a man.
“His closest comrades are men, though they are not necessarily the people he loves best in the world. He organizes them into a battalion of sacrifice. He is remarkably sparing in his praise of them; certainly, as is the case with many good and wise men, he is much more desirous that they should come to know him than that they should feel comfortable about themselves. From his apostles he seems to prefer the love that accompanies apprehension of the truth, rather than love born of his own affectionate actions toward them. In fact, they respond to him as men often respond: They admire and follow with all the greater loyalty the man who rebukes them for, of all things, being frightened when it appears their ship will capsize in the stormy Sea of Galilee! Men can learn from Jesus to seek the company of other men, at least in part for the sake of women, and certainly for the sake of the village, the nation, the Church, and the world.” (Anthony Esolen, Finding the Masculine Genius, interview in ZENIT, 23 April, 2007.)
Saints, since they are mirrors in whom we can see Christ, are also role models for Ignatians. St. Joseph particularly; not to mention the countless canonized saints one or more of whom he asks to be his special guides on the roads to fatherhood. Such mentors beget sons with something of their own form of Christlikeness: As Heric of Auxerre, author of a life of St. Germanus (c. 378 – c. 348), states:
“Since the glory of the father shines in the training of the children, of the many sons in Christ whom St. Germain is believed to have had as disciples in religion, let it suffice to make mention here, very briefly, of one most famous, Patrick, the special Apostle of the Irish nation, as the record of his work proves. Subject to that most holy discipleship for eighteen years, he drank in no little knowledge in Holy Scripture from the stream of so great a well-spring. Germain sent him, accompanied by Segetius, his priest, to Celestine, Pope of Rome, approved of by whose judgement, supported by whose authority, and strengthened by whose blessing, he went on his way to Ireland.”