Sons of the Father

Father & son

Labor Day evening, I came home from my folks’ early enough to slip in with Fr. Novajosky and watch the end of the first episode of Ken Burns’ video series, The Civil War.  I knew what was coming and could almost recite along as the narrator read Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife, Sarah, professing his love and accurately predicting his death in battle.  He had so hoped, he said, to have seen with her their boys “grown to honorable manhood,” one of several poignant phrases that never loses its resonance.  

Prescinding for the moment from the value of ‘manhood’, let’s simply leave it as a differentiation from ‘boyhood’ and move to the real question here: ‘honorable.’  As often as we hear the word ‘honor’ used in our own time, do we give any thought to what it meant in our country a century or two ago?

In his book, Young Washington, Peter Stark recounts many of the adventures and episodes in the young adult life of the first president, and frequently cites with bemusement and disapproval the young man’s stated desire to obtain ‘honor’.  Understood in a way that jibes with modern use, it could be taken to mean fame or celebrity, approval, and maybe even fortune.  Today’s cynicism would call his efforts ‘brand management.’  In his shallowness, Stark attributes shallowness to the sine qua non of our nation’s founding.

But in pre-modern American culture, as in a millennium and a half of Christian culture before that, ‘honor’ was more akin to respect and rectitude, a hard-won reputation for doing the right thing, the good thing, the selfless thing, when it was hardest, because it was right and good and selfless.  Honor was the basis of trust, and the requisite for leadership.  It was the greatest asset that a father could bestow on his children, but it could also be squandered or lost by either generation.  George Washington’s family in his youth presented him with such an honor deficit. 

Recently I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that lightly treated the phenomenon of young adults sharing or inquiring after one another’s FICO credit scores as an element of dating or mating.  This is a desperation move by servants of technology in a commoditized society, and its many shortcomings are evident.  This is what is left to a society that values only being ‘true to oneself,’ rather than any real goodness or truth.  It is a vain attempt to fill the gap left by the abandonment of honor.

People are confused now when all the time they hear silliness like the announcer’s invitation before ballgames to “Please stand as we honor our country with a performance of the national anthem.”  We stand for the anthem out of obligation, for our nation’s honor is not dependent on our salute, but rather the reverse.  We salute our nation who bestows on us the honor of being her citizens or her guests, and when we stand for her anthem, we honor our debt to her.  This behavior is simply honorable but does not garner honor for us, who fulfill the most basic of obligations at little real expense, or even effort.

Honor is not something we bestow on another by our intentions, efforts, or accolades.   When we say we honor our beloved dead, we are honoring our debt of life, and honoring our obligation as Christian souls to pray for them.  We are especially indebted to all whose death obtained anything good for us, like freedom or safety or another day of living, and to fail to repay that would be dishonorable for us but detract nothing from them or their honor.  Be wary of anything proposed ‘in honor of’ someone, or worse yet, a Mass offered ‘in honor of’ any mortal. Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor and glory… 

Fr. Nova was taking up this classic and moving video series as part of his recent wading into that troubled period of our nation’s history.  Knowing my long-time interest, he shares things he learns or encounters, and thereby sparks from me a torrent of thoughts, recollections, and observations that you would think by now he would know enough to be able to dodge.  Such a torrent you might just be enduring even now as you read this.

But Fr. Novajosky has been a good companion these three years because he has not shied away from such complex questions, nor has he refrained from sharing his insights and erudition with me on questions both consequential and recreational.  I think both of us, indeed all of us in the rectory and the parish, have been spurred to do what is right, good, and selfless on more than one occasion because of his participation here these past three years.  His is indeed an honorable priesthood.

Monsignor Smith