On this Father's Day, let's not forget about our Spiritual Fathers

Today is Father's Day (here in the United States). Today, we celebrate the many long years of personal sacrifices of men everywhere in order to raise children. However, we sometimes forget about our priests and bishops, who are appointed our spiritual fathers.

Like fathers who raise children, a priest is responsible for raising his spiritual children in the faith. Being a priest means that a man must make many personal sacrifices, such as the freedom to be married, in order to do his duties. Even though our father and mother are our first teachers, a priest is responsible for educating his flock on church teaching and beliefs and for helping to foster prayer in his parish communities. Priests are also dispensers of the sacraments. No (validly ordained) priest means no valid Eucharist. Priests act in the person of Christ in the sacrament of Confession, showing a father's love and forgiveness when we are truly sorry for our sins we have committed. There are many more examples I could use to show how our priests are fathers, but I am sure you run come up with more.

In this day and age of secularization and the unfortunate abuse of minors by a small handful of priests, I think our priests are under-appreciated and taken for granted many times. There are some parishes out there without a full-time priest, and the faithful there celebrate Mass together when a priest does come to visit the parish. The vocation to the priesthood is growing, but there are there are places still deficient in (good and holy) priests. We could always use more priests.

So on this Father's Day, besides celebrating your own father I don't forget to celebrate all the good that our priests and bishops have done for us as well. Ask your priest if there is anything you can do for them. Or a side note, I would love it if this piece showed up the front page of New Advent.

I would like to hear about the good that your father or your parish priest has done, so please share it or any memorable moments with your father or priest in the comment box below or e-mail me at catholictechgeek@gmail.com. You can also share with me on twitter (twitter username is @rctechgeek). Feel free to subscribe to my rss feed as well.

If you want to give your father something he will enjoy this Father's Day,  give him some Mystic Monk Coffee (use this link or click on the picture below to access the store and purchase). Trust me, it's good coffee (in most instances, better than Starbucks coffee) and you won't regret buying some. For the summer, they are also offering Iced Coffee as well. If you like tea more than coffee, they also offer tea (use the same link above or picture below to purchase). Using the link (or picture below) to buy the coffee (or tea) helps the monks out and helps me with college expenses as well.

Feel free to try out my apps for Windows Phone: Mobile Media Manager, a media player app I made which has some features which (I feel) are missing from the system zune player, and BSA Eagle Tracker, an app that boy scouts can use to track their progress to Eagle Scout (when the scout handbook isn't always handy). New versions of the media player with new features/bug fixes is coming soon. BSA Eagle Tracker is also getting a bug fix for an obscure bug I noticed.

BSA Eagle Tracker download: http://bit.ly/Mm1Upo
Mobile Media Manager (paid version) download: http://bit.ly/y3rf6V
Mobile Media Manager (free version) download: http://bit.ly/xGCsWE

Update (6-18-2012): I have a follow-up to this piece right here.