Many attempts have been made to define the feminine, and more recently, the masculine genius. Naturally, this is difficult enough in the contemporary context, so fraught is it with the dualism between the body and the spirit. By contrast, if we begin by looking at the human organism as a whole, we can actually study the physical body and find in it a deeper meaning since “the body and the body alone … makes visible the invisible.”

Our reproductive organs are for being and fully becoming a man and a father and being and fully becoming a woman and a mother. But if those organs are used as pleasure toys, then we forget what they are really for and so we deny and block out being mothers and fathers and we therefore forget what it really means to be men and women.

There is only one adventurer in the world, as can be seen very clearly in the modern world: the father of a family. Even the most desperate adventurers are nothing compared with him. Everything in the modern world is organised against that fool, that imprudent, daring fool, against the unruly, audacious man who is daring enough to have a wife and family, against the man who dare to found a family.

When Jesus first said Abba, he meant Joseph. As with all fathers, the vocation of Joseph was to provide for Jesus as seamless a transition from father to Father as possible.

Masculinity is essentially and inherently tied to fatherhood. Fatherhood is not an option for a man. It is a requirement. Fatherhood is the purpose for which God created man.

The father according to the flesh has in a particular way a share in that principle which is in a manner universal found in God. The father is the principle of generation, of education and discipline.