Almost 30 years of my ministry has been dedicated to priestly formation. I’ve offered retreats and spiritual direction to priests around the country. I’ve lectured at seminaries in foreign countries. And I’ve served in five different seminaries here in the United States. Today, I tell seminarians I no longer feel paternal affection for them. Now I feel more like Paw-Paw!

Yet seminarians today may need healthy paternal affection more than ever. Presuming they reflect their generation, about a quarter were raised without a father. Half feel lonely and anxious. Virtually all were exposed to technology long before they were old enough to make wise decisions about the use of social media.

And the media reflects this lack of paternal presence. We of the Paw-Paw generation recall television dominated by healthy male figures. “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Bonanza,” “The Rifleman” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (even “The Rockford Files”) were of different genres but had one common theme: All were based on widowers who raised their son(s). The absence of mothers highlighted the role of the father even more than other programs that provided positive father figures such as “Leave It to Beaver.”

Although these programs also reflected other aspects of our generation — for example, little racial diversity — and although today’s media is more fragmented, one looks in vain for positive, present, biological fathers in today’s programming. Either dad is absent, or present but useless.

How can young and future priests become spiritual fathers with so few mentors and little mentoring from biological fathers? One way may be to find spiritual fatherhood through the story of Guadalupan motherhood. So here is a personal reflection about how the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe helps me continue to be a spiritual father to a generation young enough to be my grandchildren and diverse enough to be la generación cósmica (see Mexican writings concerning la raza cósmica).

Paw-Paw Remembers

When I was 5 years old, my parents separated. We had to sell our house and pawn our possessions. I watched my mother’s face become careworn, as if scarred by a thorn. Ashamed of the secondhand furniture that filled our rented home on the wrong side of town, she was proud of one red rocker reserved for company.

Company soon arrived in the form of hefty Father Hayden. Although his visit was a surprise, we all knew what to do. We followed a script my mother developed and directed. Mike sat comfortably upon the cushion that had a spring pushing through. Donna draped an arm over a stain on the back of the coach. My little brother and I positioned ourselves over the worn spot on the rug. Everyone had a role to play in acting as if our ragged home was respectable. Mother entered the stage with the scene set and the cast on cue. She served Father Hayden a cup of coffee. She ushered him to the red rocker. Crack! As the portly priest sat down, one rocker snapped. Father Hayden lurched, cup clattering, coffee spilling onto his saucer. I watched as my mother’s face turned forlorn as a field of thorns. Until Father Hayden righted himself. Coolly sipping hot coffee, he smiled: “Why, Mrs. Davis, your children are even more wonderful than your coffee.” And on mother’s cheeks there arose pink pleasure like the blush of a rose.

We tried hard to fit in, but Father Hayden made us feel at home. Juan Diego’s first words are all about fitting in: “Am I worthy? Do I deserve this?” He doubted because he felt grief, shame and fear. He grieved because he no longer had a home; the conquistadores stole his land, enslaved his people and assaulted his culture. He felt shame because he wasn’t rich enough, important enough or smart enough to talk to a bishop. And he was afraid no one would believe him. Juan Diego felt like secondhand furniture that would never fit in. Grief, shame and fear made him homeless in his home country.

However, the Virgin soothed his grief by robing herself in his culture, by speaking his language. And by staking a claim to the land: I am the mother of “the owner and Lord of what is around us and the owner and lord of the sky, the owner of the earth.” She eases his shame by confirming, “Know for sure that I have no lack of messengers; but it is necessary that you, personally, go and plead … my wish,my will, become a reality.” And she calms his fear, consoling: “Do not fear. Am I not here, I, who am your mother?”

Juan Diego, like all native peoples of Mexico, tried to fit in. Only the Virgin Mary made him feel at home. Hence the church she wished him to build she calls her home, because Mother Mary wants us all to feel at home. And in her home nobody is treated like secondhand furniture that could never fit in.

If Mother Mary wishes us to build her a church that is her home, what kind of spiritual father does she desire? Priests such as those two who bristle like thistle at Juan Diego? Prickly priests easily outraged because they love pet peeves more than people? Priests who fashion parishes after their own image and likeness as a private club for members who fit in only as long as they dislike the same people and grumble about the same issues? Such priests do not serve parishioners, they just fashion groupies. Is it so miraculous that Mother Mary, who wishes us to build her a church that is her home, should choose Juan Diego rather than those priests who dismiss him with scorn that wounds like a thorn?

Mother Mary draws out the thorn from the lowborn when she chooses them to build her a church that she calls their home. Like Jesus, Our Lady of Guadalupe’s image doesn’t create groupies, it contemplates God. A Marian priest also adorns the lowborn with the delicate tenderness of the rose that her image exposed.

If our Mother Mary wishes us to build her a church that is her home, what kind of spiritual father does she desire? One who balances himself with care upon a broken chair? One who, while lurching out of place, can still make others feel at home? A priest who can sip from a stained saucer and still treat the server as a gift? A priest who asks for nothing except to make others feel worthwhile?

Spiritual Fathers for Mary

The seed of my vocation was planted by stories about priests my elders had known. The Mee-Maws and Paw-Paws of my childhood spoke of priests during the Great Depression. They admired ones like “Holy Old Father Joe,” who set up a dentist’s office in the rectory with volunteer doctors: “If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have a tooth left in my head.” But also of a priest who dined during Lent on shrimp and lobster while condemning a widow with seven children who made them soup with a beef bone: “He could define charity with Latin phrases, but I never saw him practice it in any way that I could understand.”

Brothers, do you want to be a spiritual father for Mary, our mother? Then build up a church that is her home. Build up a church where no one treats anyone like secondhand furniture that can never fit in. Spiritual fathers for Mary, our mother, do not gather fans or groupies like thistle and thorn. Spiritual fathers for Mary. our mother. are like Juan Diego, and they gather the delicate tenderness of the rose her image exposed. If you want to be a spiritual father for Mary, our mother, build up a church not imprinted with your image, but stamped with her likeness.

Behold her likeness leading us to the splendor of her son’s love, passionate yet tender. Behold she who beheld the naked clothes of Christ’s wounds blooming like a bloody rose. Then tuck that bloody rose into the tilma of your heart; its tender scent shared with all is never spent.

FRANCISCAN FATHER KENNETH G. DAVIS is director of spiritual formation at Saint Joseph Seminary College in Louisiana.

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Quick Action

In Pope Francis’ World Youth Day message for 2022-23, the pope reflected on the need to act in haste, like Mary responded in haste to visit her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who was with child. The pope said:

“Mary set out in haste towards the hills, ‘because she rejoiced in the promise and sought to serve others with the enthusiasm born of her joy. Full of God, where else could she have gone if not towards the heights? The grace of the Holy Spirit permits no delay.’ Mary’s haste is thus a sign of her desire to serve, to proclaim her joy, to respond without hesitation to the grace of the Holy Spirit.

“Mary was motivated by the needs of her elderly cousin. She did not hold back, or remain indifferent. She thought more of others than of herself. And this gave enthusiasm and direction to her life. Each of you can ask: ‘How do I react to the needs that I see all around me? Do I think immediately of some reason not to get involved? Or do I show interest and willingness to help?’ To be sure, you cannot resolve all the problems of the world. Yet you can begin with the problems of those closest to you, with the needs of your own community. Someone once told Mother Teresa: ‘What you are doing is a mere drop in the ocean.’ And she replied: ‘But if I didn’t do it, that ocean would have one drop less.’”

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