When my two sons were learning their catechism, I would joke that the most important of the Ten Commandments was the fourth: Honor thy father and thy mother. Some 20 years later, as I enter the Medicare phase of life, I recite for them (more seriously) the sage words of Sirach:

“My child, take care of your father when he grows old; give him no cause for worry as long as he lives. Be sympathetic even if his mind fails him; don’t look down on him just because you are strong and healthy. The Lord will not forget the kindness you show to your father; it will help you make up for your sins.” (Sir 3:12-14)

I appreciated the truth of this advice in my relationship with my own father. Yes, it was easy to treat him with patience and respect because he aged gracefully and taught me much in his final years about the meaning of life and how to prepare for death. Despite multiple trips to the emergency room in busy midtown Manhattan (for heart incidents or falls), he rarely complained and was invariably in good humor, helped somewhat by painkillers that transported him to a realm beyond earthly cares. He passed away quietly late one night in a Catholic hospice, where he was visited daily by a Maryknoll priest (who anointed him many times on request), and by a lady in blue (he never claimed she was the Blessed Mother, but we, his sons, knew it was she).

My father provided for many during his life, and he was doing the same in his journey to death. In a reversal of Sirach, I now see, he was caring for his sons, teaching us how to face our own final days and leaving us a legacy of love.

These thoughts came to me this past Sunday, the seventh Father’s Day since my dad died. Amid the cards and loving words of my wife and sons, I wondered what I was leaving my boys—now young men—not so much in material goods but in the enduring values of faith and virtue. I thought about the father figures of the Bible, and what I could learn from how they lived and died, and realized, with some relief, that they were not all perfect.

Abraham, our “father in faith,” earned his title by following God’s commands and believing in His promises. Though advanced in age, and with his wife Sarah unable to conceive naturally, he moved his household to the promised land, trusting in God’s assurance that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars. Yet what are we to make of his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, raising a knife to strike him just before the angel stayed his hand? Abraham showed great faith that “God himself will provide the lamb” for the sacrifice (Gen 22:8), yet I wonder what Isaac thought of his elderly father after that brush with death. For my part, it would have been difficult to sleep easily under the same roof with my dad, and I certainly would watch my back at the dinner table.

But that’s the way it was with some Old Testament fathers. Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph, upon whom he bestowed “a coat of many colors,” seeded jealousy among his other sons, who tossed Joseph into a cistern to die. David cast his warm gaze on Bathsheba and a cool eye on her husband, whom he had slain in battle. Adultery and murder led to dissension in his own household as his son Absalom rose against him. Yet when the young man was killed, the king wailed in one of the most touching scenes of grief in the Bible:

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam 18:33)

True, David’s paternal tenderness and remorse came a little late, but his repentance was real, as shown by his well-known penitential Psalm 51.

We have to look to the New Testament for an undisputed paradigm of human fatherhood: the “just man” Joseph, husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus. He is the ultimate strong, silent type. At the command of an angel, he acts with great faith and power to protect Mary and Jesus from Herod’s rage, and serves as a sure masculine model as Jesus grows to be known as the carpenter’s son. Yet not a word of Joseph is recorded in the Gospels. What lesson are we fathers to draw from this? Perhaps as St. James writes:

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (Jas 1:22-25)

In a culture saturated with words, words, words—in print, on the airwaves, in cyberspace—that too often accuse and divide, we dads would do well to follow St. Joseph’s example. Listen, learn, and lead with the heart of a humble servant, and use words to build up rather than tear down. The future—our children—is in our hands. Treat them as the precious gifts they are.