A Man for all Seasons

“Nathan said to David, 'You are the man...'” (2 Sam 12:7)

This was not exactly an exultation of King David's manhood – that's how the prophet Nathan rebuked David in the Old Testament for setting up Uriah the Hittite to be killed in battle. David could then take Uriah's wife Bathsheba as his wife. David had committed adultery with her, resulting in her pregnancy.

I attended the first Catholic Men's Conference at Charlotte Catholic a couple weeks ago. And although I hadn't being unfaithful to my wife or ordered another man's hit, the Holy Spirit called me out at the Conference for not having been the man I thought I was.

Before attending the Conference, I was convinced that I was a man of prayer, a loving husband and father. Well, the keynote speaker, Fr. Larry Richards of the Diocese of Erie, Pa., showed me that I had been suffering from an acute case of self-deception. My prayer life had been filled with self-interest, and I had constantly placed myself before God and my family.

With a drill-sergeant-turned-Pentecostal-preacher style and a quick wit reminiscent of George Carlin, Fr. Larry got in the face of almost 700 men present at the Charlotte Catholic gym. His message was overdue for a lot of us present, and I wish every Catholic man in the Diocese of Charlotte had attended that conference.

At one point, Fr. Larry asked us if we would lay down our lives for our wives and families and take a bullet for them if an intruder were to invade our homes. We all said yes. His response was, “Well, the world, the flesh and the Devil want to get to your wife and kill your family. And you have tell them, 'you have to get through me to get to them.'”

That did it for me. I came to see that a real man prays and loves. A real man builds his day on God and arms himself for battle with the shield of God's grace in the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist, in that order. A real man picks up the sword of the Word of God by reading and meditating on the Scriptures daily. A real man loves by laying his life down for others in service, and he places God first, others second and himself last. A real man strives to become a saint by dying to himself and embracing his cross on a daily basis. That's the kind of man Fr. Larry preached about during the conference, and that's the kind of man I pray to become.

There's a real battlefield out there for men, and it's time for us to step up spiritually and become relevant in our Catholic households and in society again. Not by lording it over, but by us becoming servant-leaders. God expects us to be “the man” – the man our wives and families deserve.