From the Desk of the President
President Thomas E. Dillon
Reflections on Fatherhood
(Spring 2005 Newsletter)
[Index
of Past Articles by President Dillon]
In recent months, the community of Thomas Aquinas College
has been saddened by a number of deaths: Emeritus Board member
J. Edward Martin; friends John Cohn, Msgr. John Huhmann, His
Eminence Jan Cardinal Schotte (our 1999 Commencement Speaker);
a May 2005 graduate, Paul Levine; a 1987 alumna, Jackie Lemmon,
who was a 39-year-old wife and mother of nine; former student
and brother of two of our graduates, Andrew Keeler, who was
killed in Iraq on Good Friday; and, as I write this, only
yesterday, our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, with whom my
wife and I were privileged to have two audiences, sharing
with him just two Easters ago our plans for Our Lady of the
Most Holy Trinity Chapel.
Such losses are hard to bear, and they are especially difficult
for those closest to the deceased, who mourn the deprivation
of their presence. As difficult as it is to endure the loss
of those whom we love and whose company we cherish, their
passing is a powerful and sobering reminder to us who are
left behind of the most fundamental reality of the human condition-our
personal mortality.
In our contemporary culture, we are conditioned to ignore
our steady and inevitable movement toward death-and thus also
to ignore searching out the Source of our existence and the
final destination of this our life's journey. The incontrovertible
fact is, however, that we find ourselves born into a world
with a history that precedes us, and we cannot account for
our own being-we are not the fashioners of our own intelligence,
our bodily nature, our capacity to love or to aspire to exalted
deeds. Should we not, therefore, whole-heartedly and whole-mindedly
pursue what must be the most basic human question of all:
"From whence do I come, and whither do I go?"
The first reading in the College's freshman seminar, Homer's
Iliad, engenders questions about the nature of our
existence and about that for which we should live. What is
perhaps most striking about the Iliad is that it shows
so well certain puzzling contradictions of our human life.
There is the beauty and grandeur of nature, the pleasure of
friendship, the nobility of courage, the sweetness of compassion.
At the same time, however, there is what is dark in the soul:
there is pain, there is suffering, and most of all, there
is death. All of us, deep down, know full well this disturbing
truth that the Greeks in the Iliad knew-that we must
die, that we are not the masters of our existence. Nevertheless,
given all that is good in human life, and despite the misfortunes
we encounter, we yet desire to live, and to do so forever:
we yearn in the depths of our souls to be immortal.
The same desire for immortality was so strong in the Greeks
of the Iliad that it determined how they would conduct
their very lives. They would live for glory. For if they would
do glorious deeds, though it might mean a short life and death
in battle, at least their names might live on through the
ages, and in this way some shadowy form of immortality might
be theirs.
Now we, as fellow members of the human race, both see the
cold reality of what Homer calls "dark death" and
at the same time share with the Greeks the desire for immortality.
As Christians, however, we have the proclamation of Christ
that should make us abound with joy: I am the resurrection
and the life, says Our Lord, he who believes in me,
even if he die, shall live; and whoever lives and believes
in me, shall never die. Who cannot be moved by the words
of the dying Christ on the Cross as He speaks to the thief
who believes and defends Our Lord against rebukes, Amen
I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.
That for which we yearn-life beyond death-is promised to us
by Our Saviour Himself in the Gospels if we but live in Him.
Moreover, the Gospels show us in detail how we are to live
in Christ and what is necessary for salvation. Thus we see
in the revealed word of God the rightness of the desire for
everlasting life expressed in the Iliad. Moreover, we who
have a divine guidance that the Greeks of the Iliad did not
have are led in the Gospels to see the emptiness of mere human
glory and the fullness of the life of natural and supernatural
virtue. What an immeasurable blessing is our Faith!
All of this hits home very much for me at this particular
time. Just two months ago, I experienced the greatest personal
loss of my life, the death of my father, who, at 77, succumbed
to lung cancer. He suffered much in his last weeks, but I
am consoled that he practiced his Catholic faith, that he
received the sacraments even up to his death, and that his
life was one of exemplary virtue and Christ-like love.
Keenly aware of how much my parents shaped me-by their teaching,
by their caring discipline, but especially by their extraordinary
good example, I am deeply thankful to God for giving me this
wonderful father. I have always immensely enjoyed his company-as
did others in my family as well as his many good friends-for
his wit, his good cheer, his humility, and his joy of life.
He taught me a great deal about virtue and honesty by the
way he conducted his life. In particular, he taught me the
meaning of love by quietly and habitually sacrificing himself
for the good of his family in ways too numerous to count.
In fact, as I reflect on his life, I see that he taught me
much about God Himself by the very way he lived.
In the greatest prayer we know, recited at every Mass, Christ
invites us to call God "Our Father." The first understanding
we have of fatherhood, however, comes from our own fathers,
and we are better able to fathom the Fatherhood of God the
more perfectly our own fathers manifest what is best in human
fatherhood.
I learned in some measure about God's providence from my
father's watchful care for his family, about God's mercy from
my father's tender patience and forgiving nature, about God's
goodness from my father's exemplary virtue and integrity.
Especially did I learn about God's love from my father's deep
and unconditional love of his wife and children.
I am grateful to my friends for your prayers for the repose
of my father's soul; I am grateful to God for the gift of
this magnificent man; and I am grateful to my father for the
way in which he molded and enriched my life. Thank you, Dad.
May God sublimely elevate and enrich your life now and forever
by bringing you home to Him, the loving Father of us all.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2005
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